Insight without borders: An introduction

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting the first in a series of interviews titled 'Insight without borders'. Conducted with multi-national experts and innovators in the field of marketing, these short interviews are designed to explore practices, trends and insights across geographic and intellectual borders.

Why cross borders? Because this is how organizations and businesses can unearth some of their greatest insights and opportunities. In fact, according to the innovation author Mehrdad Baghai, "the search for new opportunities can easily fail if strategists have their eyes fixed on an image of business as it is today". 

Some of the world’s most successful organizations aggressively cross geographic and intellectual borders in pursuit of insight, like Intel, who employ sociologists and ethnographers who spend months in emerging markets embedded in grassroots communities to identify the latent needs of local consumers” (Harvard Business, 2009).

Conversely, remaining within borders can easily lead to missed opportunities and mismanaged outcomes, as was the case when a “French pharmaceutical company attempted to sell a liver disorder drug in Germany; failing to realise that German consumers don’t actually care about their livers” (Mesdag, 2000).

These two examples of crossing geographic and intellectual borders illustrate the intent behind this series of interviews. Each interviewee has been selected for their depth of insight and country of residence, bringing to bear a combination of cultural and professional experience. 

So if you’re interested in exploring how psychology can influence digital dialogue, or how Asian innovation may transform America business, stay tuned for Insight without borders.