china intelligence is getting better. are the decisions?

The harder problem for global brands in China is no longer getting the information. It is knowing what decision that information is meant to change, and whether leadership is prepared to change course when the findings challenge the plan. Research briefs already encode a view of the problem, so the work tends to confirm whatever was assumed. Abundance makes it worse: a team that wants to expand finds reasons to expand; one that wants to wait finds reasons to wait. China sharpens this because assumptions move faster than annual plans can respond. Ralph Lauren and Galeries Lafayette made opposite bets on scale, but each seems to have known in advance what would make it act. The discipline is to name the assumptions your strategy depends on, agree what would cause you to reconsider, and decide who has the authority to do so. Before commissioning another China study, the question is not what else you can learn. It is what finding would make you act differently.