Internationalisation has always been shaped by fundamentals – customer demand, competitive intensity, and cost to serve. What’s changed is that infrastructure has moved from being a background variable to a strategic constraint and, increasingly, a source of advantage. In a world where geopolitics, energy security, and technology adoption are reshaping where growth can reliably happen, infrastructure is becoming the platform countries use to build resilience – and the platform companies rely on to scale across borders.
A useful way to think about the shift is this: many expansion plans still assume that infrastructure is broadly “good enough” in developed markets and “catching up” in emerging markets. But multi-country analysis over the past three decades suggests a more uneven reality. Some nations have rapidly expanded their infrastructure base, while investment in others has stagnated – creating widening gaps in readiness for digitisation, electrification, and supply-chain resilience.
The divergence that matters most: infrastructure “haves” and “have-nots” are separating faster
Across countries, infrastructure investment has been diverging sharply. Fast-growing nations have materially expanded their infrastructure stock over the past 30 years, while investment in many Western economies has been relatively flat. That divergence isn’t just about roads and bridges; it affects energy capacity, digital connectivity, and the ability to absorb shocks – exactly the conditions that shape the speed and cost of international growth.
For internationalising companies, this creates a strategic implication that often gets missed in market-entry decks: the best growth market on paper can be the wrong growth market in practice if the enabling system can’t deliver – whether that’s power reliability, data connectivity, cross-border logistics, or the public-sector capacity to execute critical projects on time.
The counterintuitive insight: the biggest marginal gains can be in developed economies – if delivery works
Conventional wisdom says that infrastructure investment produces the highest economic returns in developing economies, because they’re building “from a lower base.” Yet long-run modelling across many countries suggests that the marginal benefits of infrastructure investment can be highest in developed economies – particularly through investments that modernise energy systems and accelerate digitisation. The catch is that delivery inefficiency often prevents those gains from being realised.
That matters for expansion leaders because developed markets are often assumed to be “low execution risk.” In reality, some developed economies face aging assets, constrained delivery capacity, and slower project throughput. For companies entering those markets, the risk isn’t that the opportunity is small; it’s that timelines, permitting, and ecosystem bottlenecks can distort the economics of scaling – especially for energy-intensive and data-intensive businesses.
In developing economies, the prize is not “more infrastructure” – it’s the right infrastructure, sequenced well
In developing economies, infrastructure still drives meaningful long-term growth, but the constraint often isn’t willingness to invest. It’s the ability to pick strategic projects that reinforce a long-term economic vision – rather than building assets that look impressive but don’t unlock productivity. Transport infrastructure is frequently among the most valuable categories, but the economic payoff is strongly linked to complementary investments in skills and human capital.
For internationalisation, that translates into a practical rule: market entry success increasingly depends on whether the country’s infrastructure roadmap aligns with your business model – and whether your business can ride that roadmap rather than fight it.
What this means for internationalisation strategy in 2026
The infrastructure story isn’t just macroeconomics. It changes how companies should evaluate expansion targets, design footprints, and plan execution.
1) Market attractiveness must include “energy and digital headroom”
Energy and digitisation have become the infrastructure categories that most reliably separate scalable markets from constrained ones – particularly as AI adoption and data-centre demand increase pressure on power systems. In developed markets, expanding and modernising energy infrastructure shows especially strong association with medium-term growth impacts, and the same demand dynamics are beginning to shape industrial and services location decisions.
For expansion leaders, the question is no longer “is electricity available?” It’s:
- Can the market support incremental load reliably and at predictable cost?
- Are grid upgrades and generation additions realistic in timing, or perpetually delayed?
- Is the regulatory environment stable enough to support long-lived investment decisions?
2) Transport connectivity is not one thing – domestic vs. international linkages change outcomes
Transport investments don’t create the same value everywhere. Evidence suggests the growth impact is highly context dependent, and it matters whether a project unlocks domestic bottlenecks (moving goods and people inside the country) or improves international connectivity (linking to key trading partners).
For internationalisation, this is a common trap. Companies sometimes assume that a new port, highway, or rail corridor automatically improves their cost-to-serve. In practice, the value often depends on whether the asset connects into your actual network: supplier nodes, distribution centres, customer clusters, and cross-border corridors.
3) The biggest risk isn’t “bad strategy.” It’s delivery failure.
Across infrastructure, a recurring theme is that value depends on both choosing the right projects and delivering them effectively. Delivery inefficiency – unclear incentives, fragmented accountability, weak risk planning, and bottlenecks across supply chains – can erase theoretical gains.
Internationalising firms experience the same phenomenon in micro: the entry plan looks sound, but execution falters because the ecosystem can’t deliver permits, talent, utilities connections, or partner performance at the required pace.
A practical infrastructure lens for expansion: “Pick right, build right” for companies
A helpful way to operationalise the insight is to adapt the “pick right, build right” logic into an internationalisation playbook.
Pick right: choose markets and entry modes that match your operating needs
Before committing to a country entry, pressure-test the market against three infrastructure questions:
- Does the market’s infrastructure trajectory match your demand curve? If you expect rapid scaling, you need evidence that power, connectivity, and logistics can scale with you – not two years after you arrive.
- Where is the binding constraint likely to sit? In some markets it will be energy capacity; in others it’s permitting; in others it’s transport bottlenecks or skills availability. The constraint defines the right entry mode (partner-led, phased rollout, hub-and-spoke, greenfield vs. acquisition).
- Are you benefiting from the country’s strategic direction – or getting exposed to it? Markets that have a clear economic and social vision (security, resilience, digitisation, competitiveness) tend to invest more coherently. Where vision is unclear, projects can become disjointed and sequencing breaks – raising uncertainty for long-horizon investments.
Build right: design an entry model that can absorb volatility and delivery risk
Even in “good” markets, the key is execution. Strong delivery tends to correlate with active client stewardship, aligned incentives across the delivery chain, and explicit planning for uncertainty at portfolio and project level.
For companies, the analogous disciplines are:
- Treat expansion as a portfolio, not a single bet (pilot, scale, optionality).
- Build redundancy where it matters (dual logistics routes, alternate suppliers, scalable talent channels).
- Instrument the plan with leading indicators (permit cycle times, grid connection lead times, contractor capacity, cross-border transit reliability).
What leaders should do in the next 90 days
Most organisations don’t need a full “infrastructure strategy.” They need a sharper expansion filter and a more delivery-oriented entry plan. A pragmatic 90-day agenda:
- Run an infrastructure stress test on your target markets. Map your planned revenue ramp against energy availability, digital connectivity, logistics corridors, and talent supply. Identify where your plan depends on external delivery.
- Redesign your footprint around constraints. If grid capacity is the constraint, consider phased rollouts, alternative locations, or partner capacity. If logistics is the constraint, redesign network nodes before you lock in customer promises.
- Build a delivery playbook you can reuse. Create a repeatable approach to permits, utilities connections, partner contracting, and localisation – so each new market doesn’t require reinventing execution from scratch.
- Set governance and escalation for uncertainty. Decide in advance what triggers a pause, pivot, or acceleration: a permitting delay threshold, a cost inflation band, an energy availability milestone, a regulatory shift.
Bottom line
In 2026, internationalisation is being shaped as much by infrastructure readiness as by market attractiveness. The countries – and companies – that win will be those that pick right (aligning entry choices to real system capacity) and build right (executing with discipline, incentives, and resilience). Where infrastructure is treated as a strategic input rather than an assumption, expansion becomes faster, safer, and more scalable – even when the world is not.
