Is geography history or destiny? How innovation can thrive across cultural differences

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. His research began with a fundamental question: In the context of multi-national companies like IBM, what’s more pronounced: the culture of a company or a country?

He found that a country’s culture dominates and it could be traced to shared socialization skills specific to its people. He posited that national cultures could be contrasted on specific parameters and offered six: ‘power distance,’ ‘individualism versus collectivism,’ ‘uncertainty avoidance,’ ‘masculinity versus femininity,’ ‘long-term orientation’ and ‘indulgence versus restraint.’

‘Power distance’ indicates the extent to which inequality in power is tolerated, ‘individualism versus collectivism’ reflects how societies integrate into groups, ‘uncertainty avoidance’ considers how unknown situations and unexpected events are dealt with, ‘masculinity versus femininity’ (even if awkwardly named) refers to motivation towards achievement and success, ‘long-term orientation’ signifies a willingness to forgo immediate success and ‘indulgence versus restraint’ represents the tendency of a society to fulfil its desires.

At the risk of over-generalization, according to scores published by The Culture Factor, an advisory, here’s how India stacks up against the US and Germany respectively: power distance (77, 40, 35), individualism (24, 60, 79), uncertainty avoidance (40, 46, 65), masculinity (56,62, 66), long-term orientation (51, 50, 57), and indulgence (26, 68, 40).

As for innovation, the general dichotomies are ‘sustaining versus non-sustaining,’ wherein the former could either be incremental or radical, while ‘non-sustaining’ is disruptive. For instance, in data storage, devices such as disk drives, floppy disks, CDs, DVDs, etc, were incremental, whereas solid-state devices, which have non-moving components, are radical. The disruptive type is cloud storage.

Do cultural nuances impact the nature of innovation? It seems so. If we focus on just three factors—power distance, individualism and uncertainty avoidance—we sense that product innovation, especially of the radical or disruptive kind, would gain from cultures with a low power distance (ease of insubordination), high individualism (eschewing consensus) and high uncertainty avoidance (pursuit of perfection).

India, which scores high on power distance and low on both individualism and uncertainty avoidance, would favour incremental innovations. Take the instance of recent startups. They are mostly aggregators that link buyers and sellers in better ways. Radical innovations, let alone of the disruptive kind, have eluded India.

Perhaps this can be traced to our acceptance of what’s good enough and behaviours of seeking constant validation and immediate gratification.

It won’t be a stretch to slice the northern hemisphere into North America, Europe and Asia, and label these as disruptive, radical and incremental champions. Since oriental cultures, chiefly Chinese, Indian and Japanese, have so much to preserve, an incremental outlook is natural.

The relative youth of North America gives its people an explorative and experimentative knack, well suited for disruptions. War-torn Europe, which boasts of ancient civilizations punctuated by revolutions, has taken the path of reliable and radical innovations. This is reflected in corporate cultures.

What’s the lesson for India? Forget about culture but focus on the work climate. In the midst of a dominant country culture, you could still create a climate of low power distance, an abhorrence for uncertainty and a streak of individualism to foster the emergence of radical and disruptive ideas. This is indeed the need of the hour. Our problems need solutions that go beyond incremental redressals.

Even if geography is destiny, our young country with an old civilization needs to script its own.

The author is the writer of ‘Design Your Thinking and Design Your Career’