This study seeks to test empirically the effect of home countries' conditions on the competitiveness of their national firms. Differences in the explanatory power of the critical success factors in the advertising industry for winners and losers headquartered in the US, UK and France are used to test for domestic vs global influences. The findings suggest that a combination of both country specific and idiosyncratic factors is in play. Home countries exercise strong impact on the competitive advantages of advertising agencies. Yet, it is also possible to indentify a common set critical success factors, which possess explanatory power for variance in performance among agencies of different national origins