One day in December 2014, Sergey, the Russia general manager for a multinational consumer goods company, was up early in the morning, watching the ruble’s value slide by the minute. As the currency was crashing, he found himself facing a painful dilemma: either raise prices to recoup the losses and hit his annual target — set in U.S. dollars — or wait it out for another two months and hope that the ruble recovers, since that would give him a leg up on his competitors.