{"id":135,"date":"2013-11-30T12:39:59","date_gmt":"2013-11-30T04:39:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.www.innovationiseverywhere.com\/?p=135"},"modified":"2013-11-30T12:39:59","modified_gmt":"2013-11-30T04:39:59","slug":"cultural-awareness-innovation-challenges-facing-startups-go-global","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/cultural-awareness-innovation-challenges-facing-startups-go-global\/","title":{"rendered":"Cultural awareness and innovation: the challenges facing startups as they go global"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>To continue\u00a0<strong>our exploration of Kenya as an innovation ecosystem<\/strong>\u00a0on the fringes of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.afrikoin.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Afrikoin<\/a>, I met with\u00a0<a href=\"nailab.co.ke\/v1\/meet-samuel-gichuru-nailab-co-founder\/\u200e\">Samuel Gichuru<\/a>\u00a0from the\u00a0<a href=\"nailab.co.ke\">Nailab<\/a>\u00a0incubator. A fast-paced and energetic conversation proved helpful in pinpointing<strong>\u00a0a key challenge entrepreneurs face: the management of cultural differences<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kenya is the kingdom of mobile money <\/strong>(the\u00a0MPesa system), but it is an isolated one.\u00a0<strong>No other country<\/strong>\u00a0is using mobile money at this level, be it richer countries (South Africa), more populous ones (Nigeria) or even countries geographically close to Kenya (Tanzania, Uganda). Even within a country, different\u00a0sub-segments exist, each with their own cultural nuances, making scaling up for startups a true challenge.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_246\" style=\"width: 1034px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/innovao.cluster030.hosting.ovh.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/nailab-nairobi-kenya-sam-gichuru-intercultural-awareness-for-startups-ecosystems-martin-pasquier-1024x768-3.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-246\" class=\"size-full wp-image-246\" src=\"http:\/\/innovao.cluster030.hosting.ovh.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/nailab-nairobi-kenya-sam-gichuru-intercultural-awareness-for-startups-ecosystems-martin-pasquier-1024x768-3.jpg\" alt=\"Martin pasquier innovation is everywhere nairobi kenya afrikoin nailab nairobi kenya sam gichuru intercultural awareness for startups ecosystems\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-246\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Yet another part of Nairobi&rsquo;s tech ecosystem<\/p><\/div>\n<h2>No 2 Markets are the Same: The importance of cultural awareness and experimentation<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Innovation ecosystems<\/strong>, Samuel says, are not driven by the same factors everywhere:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In\u00a0<strong>Kenya<\/strong>\u00a0and developing countries,\u00a0<strong>necessity and poverty are the mothers of innovation<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>In the\u00a0<strong>US<\/strong>\u00a0and the Silicon Valley,\u00a0<strong>innovation is driven by aspiration<\/strong>, and it&rsquo;s no coincidence Hollywood is very close. They\u00a0<em>\u00ab\u00a0sexify everything\u00a0\u00bb,<\/em>\u00a0including entrepreneurship (think of Justin Bieber or Ashton Kutcher to name a few).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If startups are to succeed, they must\u00a0<strong>get to know the local contexts, which are multiple, obscure, intangible<\/strong>, and it takes time to get this vital understanding. In Africa, for instance, Nigeria is both a highly religious country where status is mostly reached through the oil &amp; gas business. In Kenya, the population is more diverse, but also has its \u00ab\u00a0niche\u00a0\u00bb population which cannot be adressed in the same way. The internet has made us more globalised, but cultural distinctions remain strong and they create markets with different needs and considerations.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/innovao.cluster030.hosting.ovh.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/hollywood-does-silicon-valley-afrikoin-martin-pasquier-nailab-nairobi-kenya-mobile-money-innovation-ecosystems-3.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-221\" src=\"http:\/\/innovao.cluster030.hosting.ovh.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/hollywood-does-silicon-valley-afrikoin-martin-pasquier-nailab-nairobi-kenya-mobile-money-innovation-ecosystems-3.jpg\" alt=\" Martin pasquier innovation is everywhere nairobi kenya afrikoin hollywood does silicon valley nailab mobile money innovation ecosystems\" width=\"452\" height=\"232\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>At the end of the day, we both wondered what was a\u00a0<strong>good \u00ab\u00a0model\u00a0\u00bb<\/strong>\u00a0for startups to follow to be both innovative and scalable.\u00a0<strong>Unilever<\/strong>, for instance, has a model where\u00a0<strong>contextualisation focuses primarily on<\/strong><strong>\u00a0altering the marketing strategy of the same product in different markets, <\/strong>using\u00a0different brands, colors, marketing positioning and even pricing. Even in the world of social media, we are beginning to see fragmentation as messaging apps\u00a0gain prominence alongside Facebook and Twitter. Will consumers behave differently on these platforms?<\/p>\n<p>Startups need to\u00a0<strong>learn to be culturally aware<\/strong>\u00a0but even more than that,\u00a0<strong>to go, try, fail, and try again. <\/strong>That\u00a0is the only way to discover and potentially penetrate a new market.\u00a0For MPesa, they should first focus on serving the market they are in and doing it well before exploring other markets.<\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, <a title=\"BRICS Startups\" href=\"http:\/\/www.www.innovationiseverywhere.com\/brics-startups\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">BRICS startups from Brazil, Russia, China, India and South Africa<\/a> also show how local knowledge, local ties to investors protect them, in a way, from too much predation from abroad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To continue\u00a0our exploration of Kenya as an innovation ecosystem\u00a0on the fringes of\u00a0Afrikoin, I met with\u00a0Samuel Gichuru\u00a0from the\u00a0Nailab\u00a0incubator. A fast-paced and energetic conversation proved helpful in pinpointing\u00a0a key challenge entrepreneurs face: the management of cultural differences. Kenya is the kingdom of mobile money (the\u00a0MPesa system), but it is an isolated one.\u00a0No other country\u00a0is using mobile money [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[54,47,49,51,87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-countries","category-innovators-category","category-markets-category","category-startups-innovators"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}