If so, and if Chinese firms master the art of doing business in the West, Mr Moccagatta could be proved right.
To be successful at strategy through experimentation, adaptive firms master three essential thinking steps: they continuously vary their approach, generating a range of strategic options to test.
The industry's traditional model, based chiefly on chemistry and basic biology, is giving way to a new approach based on biotechnology, computing, advanced chemistry and combinations of the three.As drugs bosses invest huge sums to help their firms master these new skills, however, the second shift makes it harder to do so.
In the past 30 years Indian firms have become experts in processing information and Chinese firms masters of frugal manufacturing.
That optimism partly reflects the unusual nature of RBS's demise.Historical grievancesMany bank failures were farcical: the bosses were revealed as clueless figureheads unaware that somewhere in their firms masters of the universe were playing with financial hand grenades.
The new turnaround firms mastered the intricacies of bankruptcy courts and tight cash-management, and recruited experienced hands from a wide range of industries whom they could deploy as interim executives.The firms' appetite for growth exceeded the supply of troubled clients, and in the late 1990s they diversified their practices.
In 2007, he started another Dallas-based company, Higher Ed Holdings, later renamed Academic Partnerships, which persuades public colleges to attract more students by outsourcing to the firm their master's-degree programs in fields such as business and education.
More recently the firm completed master planning for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a comprehensive building plan for the Kennedy Center, and a major renovation of New York City Hall, and is designing ongoing House Renewal projects at Harvard University.
Mexican services firms can master the new technologies and help American firms design new factory floors and program and install robots.
The results are more restrained than you might expect — meticulously scruffy, in a manner the firm has mastered before.
