Mind The Gap

6The Power of Transcreation: Working Where Tech and Culture Intertwine

When a company crosses borders, new requirements arise—and new possibilities open up.

This chapter takes a wide-ranging look at the options available when you enter a new market. If you enter with cultural awareness—observing how people live, gauging how they might respond to your product offering—you get a clearer picture of how you will need to adapt the product for them. And if you can grasp the underlying cultural currents, you will get ideas about what could be done to take the business to new levels.

In fact, a core purpose of this chapter is to invite broader thinking about how products and companies can evolve in new markets. The chapter was co-written by a brilliant observer and thinker we’ve had the good fortune to know.

Professor Savanid “Nui” Vatanasakdakul of Carnegie Mellon University is a cross-cultural traveler. Born and raised in Thailand amid a rich mix of Asian cultural influences, she developed an early interest in how people, technologies, and social norms shape each other. Nui’s career has taken her across four continents as both an academic and an entrepreneur. Today she teaches information systems at Carnegie Mellon’s campus in Qatar.

Nui’s research explores how culture affects technology adoption and how it should shape design.

As she says, “Many people try to build machines that work like humans. I tend to look from the human perspective to build machines that will work for us.” ...