Lead market is a term used in innovation theory and denotes a country or region, which pioneers the successful adoption of an innovative design. It sends signalling effects to other "lag" markets, which in turn helps in triggering a process of global diffusion. Marian Beise, one of the foremost propounders of this theory as it has been understood so far, states: "Innovations that have been successful with local users in lead markets have a higher potential of becoming adopted world-wide than any other design preferred in other countries".[1] Christoph Bartlett and Sumantra Ghoshal have described lead markets as "[…] markets that provide the stimuli for most global products and processes of a multinational company.