discerning emerging-market consumers in stripped-down, low-cost versions of the products they sell globally is a recipe for letdown. Yet many companies still aren’t fully aware of how far they must go to differentiate their products for these customers. Top companies, by contrast, are highly disciplined, even relentless, about setting priorities and putting aside existing assumptions. Leaders start by identifying the most important feature or two and focusing heavily on them (exhibit). This approach is quite different from the one that many companies tend to have: regarding all features as equally valuable and preferring more rather than fewer of them—an attitude deeply ingrained in some engineering cultures.