Asian Innovation -- First, the Cultural Barriers

I had trouble with my phone on a recent trip to Asia. Made the rookie's mistake of not knowing my bb was CDMA only, when you have to have GPS in that part of the world.

I was able to squeeze off a few emails, texts, and tweets in Korea. This was ironic in that many US/Canada/Australia travelers have trouble there, but there must have been an old CDMA tower somewhere in the neighborhood.

One of my tweets referred to the '"second echelon" of innovation among Southeast Asian countries.

Using a pompous, manly word like "echelon" implies one has something important to say. The military loves the word. I like it because it helps me get a grip on the frenzied acitivity in Asia right now.

Beehives are calmer places than many Asian countries today. And once I'm able to wrap my dim, linear Western mind around Asian culture, the hyper-organization found in beehives makes itself apparent in Asia as well. (More on that in a later post.)

Asian culture, as in singular culture, do you say? Yes, to invoke Danny Quayle, I do realize that it's like there are really a bunch of different countries in Asia. Yet there is a certain indirectness, or obliqueness, that one encounters everywhere. In more racist times, what Westerners referred to as "inscrutability."

Put Korea at the top of the list in directness and either India or the Philippines at the bottom, and you've made a start. Raising one's voice, making intractable demands, and generally huffing and puffing will get you nowhere. As so many have noted, "yes" doesn't necessarily mean "yes."

But I can tell you that "no" means "no," so you can get that Asian businesspeople are as flummoxed by the Westerner's sales-y "selling starts at no" mentality as Westerners are confounded by constantly hearing "it's up to you" or hearing nothing when seeking affirmation.

The trick is not getting to "no." If I do business in Asia for another 300 years I won't understand all the aspects of "face," having it, saving it, losing it, etc. So many times the notion of "saving face" seems no different than the Western idea of achieving "win-win."

But maybe it's the word "achieve" that causes the trouble. When you've been taught your entire life to strive, to be outstanding (ie, to stand out), to speak up, to say what you mean and mean what you say, and to rack up as many achievements as you can, then plunging yourself into ancient, community-centric mileau is the most confusing situation imaginable.

The language barrier can be overcome to some degree; the cultural barriers not so much.