Conversation on innovation with Hadrien Arden Enlart

Innovation management in South East Asia

(This interview was initially distributed as temporary exclusive content to The Corporate Startup newsletter subscribers. If you want to be part of our mailing list, scroll all the way down in our book’s web page and subscribe with your email address. We send a maximum 2 newsletter every month offering curated articles and exclusive content)

We’ve talked to Hadrien Arden Enlart, Head of Design for IBM iX in ASEAN, about innovation management and the impact cultural difference have on this in South East Asia.

The Corporate Startup: From your experience, how does working in Southeast Asia differ from the West?

Hadrien Arden Enlart: So I’ve been in innovation management and creative industry in Asia and SE Asia for more than two years now but I’ve been working in a Western environment, in the same industry, for almost 15 years before this. Not only Europe, but also in North America.

One doesn’t need two years actually to feel the differences. I would say working and managing in the Far East is completely different because the educational system here is completely different. In Europe, we teach critical thinking from an early age and we encourage kids to say ‘no’. In Asia things are different. The society is more hierarchical than in the West and this is reflected in the way they work.

Sometimes I had to micromanage my team, but not because they were under-performing, but because they didn’t get the instructions from the first time, and none of them asked for more details either. In general, they prefer to start work based on the little they understand than challenging the formal authority.

Let me give you a quick example. In Europe, if I would say to a graphic designer in my team: “We need to create a logo for this client. Here is the creative brief. The client needs one logo.” The designer is going to come up with 12 different options. But not in Asia. In Asia you will get exactly one logo because that’s what you asked for. And if you challenge them they would simply say: “Not my fault boss. You told me the client needs one logo. You should have said twelve.” Basically here you need to be more granular: “here is the brief. The client needs one logo but we need to present 12 to them to decide which one they like”.

It is challenging working in innovation and creative industry in a culture where the vast majority was brought up being told that following a laid out path is better than carving your own. So managing here will require more time than in the West but when instructions are clear things are moving forward much faster as they are really capable. Just saying ‘oh I need a lot of logos for the client to choose from’ is not a solution either, as they don’t know when to stop. And now you’re going to have another problem: curating 64 logos for that 9:00 AM client meeting.

TCS: How do you see the difference between corporate innovation and startup innovation in SE Asia?

HAE: The difference between corporate innovation and startup innovation is more contrasting here than in the West. In my opinion corporate innovation in SE Asia is much slower than in the West as the people seeking corporate employment here are not as rebellious as some of their western counterparts are. They are not used to speaking up, so bottom-up innovation is hard to come by in the corporate world here.

Asia is the future for a lot of industries. South East Asia, it’s booming right now. And there’s a reason for this. The dynamic in these cities is completely crazy. In SE Asia one can start a small Internet company, café or street store, 100 times faster than in Europe or the US. Why? Thanks to more permissive and flexible regulation. Sometimes this flexibility is rooted in corruption but that’s another conversation all together.

I said earlier that Asians are afraid to speak up but that’s true only in corporate setup. When it’s for them they are going to run with their ideas. There are so many examples of brilliant entrepreneurs all across Asia and that’s all thanks to their inner drive and the mindset that ‘anything is possible’.

Another thing that’s not so obvious is that entrepreneurship is more pragmatic and real here -they need to support their families. Not so much a lifestyle as in the West where is cool nowadays to say you have startup.

Another fascinating aspect of SE Asian culture is that they operate as a collective not as single individuals. They are interested in the success of the guy across the street almost as much as they are interested in their own success. That’s why you often see one business driving traffic to another one. For example all electronics store are on one street and one street alone, which is different from the street where the tailors are.

Also there is cross-pollination as poor people and rich people are actually cohabiting. And this is also part of this dynamic, because people want to become rich, and rich people know where they’re coming from. It’s quite recent, all this transformation of these countries.

So you can say it’s paradoxical: at work — in a corporate setup — they don’t take any risks, but outside of work, when it’s for their own startup ideas, they’re quite dynamic and they’re trying a lot.

TCS: So working in innovation usually requires you to be able to identify a problem. And then try to solve that. So how do you think this is going in SE Asia or what are some things that you’ve seen in terms of the average user being able to voice a problem?

HAE: User centricity, it’s beginning to bloom right now in SE Asia but this was not the case two years ago. Two years ago everything was about faith in past experience: ‘users are going to like this new product because they always liked our old products’

Interesting enough, when you asked about a potential problem, they are willing to talk to you but at the same time they don’t want to sound like they’re complaining or that they are saying something bad about a situation or a company. As it is harder here to understand if what they are facing is a minor discomfort or a major issue, you always need to attack problem identification from more angles than you would normally need to in the West.

Another peculiarity is that they don’t want to disappoint. I’ve seen multiple times our customer interview data being biased — especially the conversations had when we showed a prototype. You can hear in the recordings the interviewee asking the interviewers if that is the answer they were looking for.

I’ve come to learn that here people are reacting really well to rewards. We use to give out a lot of Starbucks vouchers when we were conducing user test. Offering them something in exchange for their input and mentioning that you are not looking for a pat on the back puts them in a position where they’ll only give you the cold truth. Don’t be surprised, though, when you hear a ‘sorry’ at end of an honest answer. If that happens you know that they were not holding anything back.

The fear of letting someone down has another advantage: they are more willing to talk to strangers as they find it hard to turn their backs — or at least harder than Europeans do.

TCS: What are your top 3 pieces of advice for westerners having to manage innovation in SE Asia?

HAE: First, be humble! One needs to forget everything learned in the West, and relearn how to do their jobs in a new cultural context. Forget, the sometimes massive, expat contract and rub-off the ‘colonial’ arrogance. The locals here are not cheap workforce, they are not inferior and they are defiantly not a form of entertainment. Arrogance will only make things worst for you: you’re never going to gather the support you need to make things happen, nobody’s going to listen to you when you’re talking in a meeting.

Second, you need to be fast. This is especially true if you’re working with China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore. In this culture decisions need to be made in an instant — taking leaps of faith every two hours is something that’s expected of leaders here. Be fearless, just do it. Basically, a leaps of faith decision taken now is better than a 100% validated decision taken tomorrow.

Third tip would be to be specific. People you’re going to work with don’t have the time to make sense of all the symbols and metaphors you want to use. Plus they don’t even have the same cultural background, so any metaphors that work in an advertisement agency in London or New York are not going to work here. Reading between the lines only works if the two communicating parties share some cultural references, which is not the case here.

I want to end up saying that despite all the differences and difficulties, the emotional roller-coaster experience of working in innovation in SE Asia is a life changing adventure like none other. And for the ones that venture here, the hands-on lesson in adaptability is going be the biggest takeaway.