GOOD IDEAS ARE GOOD – BUT THEY’RE NOT ENOUGH
April 8th, 2008 by Nico LuchsingerSo you had this great business idea, and maybe you have even turned this idea into a successful business at home. And now you’re expanding into other regions, trying to establish yourself in other countries – and fail miserably.
This is exactly what happened to a lot of Western tech companies who tried to get a hold in the Chinese market. The main reason for this, says Jonathan Haagen from the Economist Intelligence Unit in a presentation (found at Read/WriteWeb), is failure to adapt the services to local needs. It isn’t so much the huge cultural divide, but rather small details that make difference (for example, Chinese people have difficulties spelling “Google” and thus switch to a search engine whose name is easier to type for them).
Moreover, says Haagen, China is still a developing country, but Western tech companies often fail to connect to the vast majority of Internet users who are not white collars living in Shanghai or Beijing. The most important key to success, says Haagen, is therefore to “give ground operations the freedom to react in a timely manner, and respond to the needs of a specific market”. In other words: Innovation does not end with the development of a product – it is also needed to adapt a product to new markets.
(Note: An earlier version of this post has also been published at the incuTANK blog.)
