Competitiveness of a country requires continuous upgrading and, sometimes, major transformation. Thailand is at the crossroad. It can no longer pursue a strategy based on low-cost advantages, but its capability achievements are still too low to become an advanced economy. This book points out weaknesses of Thailand's national innovation system or education and suggests how the country should develop new capabilities to survive and prosper in the globalized and fiercely competitive world. It will be useful to researchers and students who want to learn more about Thailand and emerging countries, and also to policy-makers and executives involved in economic and industrial development. Co-published with IRASEC (Research Institute on Contemporary Southeast Asia), Bangkok

This book discusses the aspects of global competition in terms of the strategies that could be applied to improve the competitive position of businesses and consolidate gains particularly in the Thai market. The book is composed of 10 chapters focusing on topics related to business strategy, such as competition, marketing, innovation, utilizing information, technology, human resources, strategic alliances, customer service, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of strategies, and corporate social responsibility. This book will serve as a useful guide for those already in business in Thailand as well as for businesses that hope to expand their existing operations in Thailand to the global market.

An important question for researchers and policy markers is how to efficiently allocate limited resources for sustainable economic growth. In this paper, Global Competitiveness Reports of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the World Competitiveness Yearbooks of the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) have to been used to identify important strengths and important weaknesses of Thailand. Important strengths and weaknesses are identified based on two criterions. First criterion is the contribution or the "weight" of each factor in the national competitiveness score. The contribution of each factor can be determined statistically; however, not without difficulty. The second criterion is the ranking among a group of countries. Factors that have both high contribution and good ranking are important strengths while factors that have both high contribution and bad ranking are important weaknesses. Relying on the subcomponents of the national competitiveness statistics, the strengths of Thailand lie in its big market size, strong labor market conditions and good infrastructure system. However, the weaknesses of Thailand lie in its poor health-related factors, technological readiness, and institutions. Finally, we provide some recommendation on how to improve the national competitiveness of Thailand at present and in the future.