Time Marches on

case

study

Time Marches On:

The Worldwide Watch

Industry

M. Edgar Barrett

“…the clock, like

other machines, is

brutal and callously

efficient in its task. It

takes raw material,

in this case time, and

processes and refines

it into something

more useful to human

beings. It breaks time

down into abstract

concepts called hours,

minutes and seconds,

and then doles them

out to us, always at

the same maddening

pace.”1

1

From “Tyrant of Time, Master of Minutes” by Jay

Bookman, Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Jan.

3, 1995.

I

t’s hard to imagine functioning

in today’s world without a

watch. The modern business

person may depend on the timepiece in order to catch a train,

remember an important meeting, or download information.

Watches serve as status symbols

and fashion accessories. They

keep near-perfect time in wildly

erratic climates from Siberia to

Sudan, from thousands of miles

in the air to hundreds of feet

below the surface of the ocean—

even on trips to the moon.

Prices range from affordable to

outrageous, making timepieces

available, if not essential, to

almost everyone in the world.

Copyright © 1999 Thunderbird, The American Graduate School of International Management. All rights

reserved. This case was prepared by M. Edgar Barrett, J. Kenneth and Jeannette Seward Chair in Global

Strategy, and Research Assistants Jennifer L. Barrett and T. Hawk Sunshine for the purpose of classroom discussion only, and not to indicate either effective or ineffective management.

Thunderbird International Business Review, Vol. 42(3) 349–372 • May–June 2000

Published 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

349

M. Edgar Barrett

But while the watch’s main function—telling time—has not

changed over the past 500 years,

the worldwide watch industry

has. The center has shifted

among three different continents, and while Switzerland,

Japan, Hong Kong, and the

United States are the industry

leaders today, there is no...