The Balance Between Adapting To Other Cultures And Promoting What You Know is Right

Both GE Remodels Businesses in India and New Business Models in Emerging Markets discuss where business strategies should start in emerging markets. That is, they both argue that it is more effective to design a product and plan based on the existing culture and history of a specific location as opposed to presenting successful models to other areas and trying to get them to adapt. 

Something that I found especially interesting is the quote by GE's marketing director, Ravi Kaushik: "We're targeting the bottom of the pyramid because that's where the masses exist. I have the technology, and I need to get it to the lowest market." 

Similarly, in the HBR piece, the authors express a need to reconceive the business model. They identify researching unmet jobs and building blueprints based on that as essential tools for implementing a model that evolves with the specific society’s culture.

Regarding this week’s topic of the future of social innovation and enterprise, I think that these authors hit the nail on the head in terms of evaluating the local market and approaching ventures from the viewpoint of a startup. Initially, social enterprises cannot expect profits. They need to expect that their venture will hit a wall in terms of culture, traditions, and ideas of the region. Only once a plan is made to bypass this barrier can the social venture expect to see some turnaround- in the form of acceptance before profit margin.

It makes me think of Plumpy’nut- I’m sure that even though the entrepreneurs were ready for people to be confused by and potentially against the idea of this food, they immersed their product in a way to make it fit into the culture of their market. They thought beyond America’s acceptance and appreciation for the flavor of peanut butter and designed their strategy such that people would come to them as opposed to forcing people to feed it to their children. They established stations that were accessible and that would ensure Plumy’nut could be further recognized through word of mouth. I believe that the society’s acceptance of Plumpy’nut came partially from interest, but largely from need. My question is- how much desperation in a society should an aspiring entrepreneur accept before becoming more forceful with their business? While Plumpy’nut’s strategy of attracting the people to come to them was a good one, if it took too long, should they have eventually changed their product to be more of a flavor that the society would accept quickly, even if it meant that it was not as effective? Where is the line drawn between where an organization should be tweaking its products to be relatable to their target audience and where an organization should not accept reluctance and continue to enforce what they think is right?