Is geography history or destiny? How innovation can thrive across cultural differences
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Ever wonder why Germans seek perfection, Japanese pursue miniaturization and waste reduction, Americans are fussy about services and Indians settle for improvisation and what’s good enough? Is it something to do with where you reside? With pervasive technologies, affordable means of communication, maturing labour and capital markets and instant information dissemination, one may think that geography has become history, that who you are trumps where you are. But is it that simple? Or is geography destiny? “Who we are cannot be separated from where we’re from," notes writer Malcolm Gladwell.
“When and where you are born, what your parents did for a living, and what the circumstances of your upbringing were make a significant difference in how well you do in the world." It takes either aeons, as in the case of Europe after the Dark Ages, or sheer will power, as seen in post-war Japan and Singapore. Where you are can severely limit your resources at hand and ability to make the most of them. Social filters, political conditions and economic forces may have isomorphic effects on how individuals and institutions behave.
This creates micro-cultures. At any rate, locational effects are more enduring than universalists argue. The Dutch social psychologist and former IBM employee Geert Hofstede made a pioneering contribution to the study of cultural dimensions.
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