Interview | Innovating From East to West

“A handful of Asian brands – and the great ideas they represent – have become fixtures in living rooms, kitchens and garages around the world. But why have so few big names from the East made it in the West?”

The global research network ESOMAR (“The world organisation for enabling better research into markets, consumers and societies.”) interviewed us on branding and innovation in Asia

Among our quotes:

“Imagine you have 100Mbps Internet, while Google is optimized for ‘early broadband’. In both Japan and Korea, Google doesn’t look simple; it looks simplistic.”

“In China, many entrepreneurs have a kind of attention deficit disorder when it comes to business – seeing so many ideas passing them by that they can’t focus on any of them long enough to make it succeed. Indeed, the founder of Tencent, China’s largest IM and Internet company, has said he made instant messaging work in part because so many of his competitors found other things to move on to, and quickly abandoned it. He, in the absence of a better idea, stuck with it until he found a business model that worked.”

“As reassuring as it might be for the consumer to put a face or a flag onto a product or service, the reality is that it is increasingly irrelevant in today’s world: Innovation does not have a nationality.”

Enjoy the read!
@benjaminjoffe – speaking at eComm and Inside Social Apps.

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+8* | Plus Eight Star finds out for you what works in Asia and could work elsewhere. Follow us at @plus8star.