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Triad Power
Ohmae's 1985 framework identifying the United States, Europe, and Japan as the three poles of global competition, and the argument that any aspiring global company had to establish a significant presence in all three regions.
Triad Power (1985) made the case that competitive relevance in the late twentieth century required simultaneous operation in the three dominant consumer markets — the United States, Europe, and Japan. These were not merely the largest markets. They were markets with distinct consumer behaviors, regulatory environments, and competitive dynamics, and exclusion from any one of them meant ceding strategic ground that competitors could use to fund attacks on the others. The framework shaped a generation of corporate strategy. Multinationals organized themselves around the Triad. Investment flows followed it. National economic policies were evaluated against it. The model held, with modifications, for three decades — until AI began to dissolve the cost structure that made the Triad the relevant geography.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Ohmae's argument rested on an empirical observation and a strategic inference. The empirical observation was that the three regions accounted for the overwhelming majority of global consumption of sophisticated goods and services, and