At Face, we’ve been working in developing markets doing innovation projects for years, which puts us in a good position to say that lumping these markets together leads to misconceptions. These countries even contain variations by region within themselves, though some generalizations can still  be made at the national level. The key point is that each country must be treated separately, with a different methodology and outlook when approaching innovation projects in these markets.

In our experience, we’ve found there are 4 key areas of cultural difference that impact the approach required to run open innovation. To demonstrate them, let’s talk about two extremely different cultures – Brazil and China.

1. The Role of the Consumer

This may seem like an obvious point, but it’s still one worth making. For an open innovation project to work, it helps for there to already be a culture of consumers and companies working together, where consumers can feel they have a role to play as active stakeholders.

In Brazil, our experience has shown us that consumers tend to engage and contribute ideas more naturally in innovation projects, but while Chinese people love adopting innovations, their expectations are generally lower with regards to innovation and their right to influence them.

Still, we’ve found Chinese consumers to be highly enthusiastic in building on what they know, coming up with improvements upon existing products and helping progress concepts. It just sometimes takes a different approach, often using stimulus materials that are completely unrelated to the category or task, to unlock the larger creative leaps to get at the big breakthrough ideas.

Meanwhile, in Brazil, consumers offer such ideas more freely and without prompting, so the challenge can be how to ground the big ideas and making them actionable. So, we use more contained stimulus. For example, we use adjacent categories and relevant words to avoid generating ideas that are hard to tie down.

2. Working Style

This is an important area to consider when planning task structures. After all, tasks have to be fun and engaging, and that can mean different things in different places – or with different people, for that matter!

We have found that Brazilian consumers tend to attack tasks with passion and gusto for as long as it is fun and stimulating. This means boredom can be an ever present danger. Limited structure seems to work well here. Ambiguity in how to achieve a stated goal can keep them engaged by allowing them to use their creativity. The facilitator’s role becomes to set the goal and then allow the consumers to achieve it their own ways, without limiting them.

Meanwhile, the element of mianzi (saving face related to personal prestige) in Chinese culture means that while Chinese participants tend to be diligent in completing tasks, they can also tend to avoid asking for clarification if something is unclear so as not to lose face by admitting difficulty. A lack of structure can lead to a relatively larger sense of discomfort than it would in other cultures. The facilitator’s goal becomes making sure that tasks are clear, so that everyone is comfortable and ready to tackle the challenge at hand.

3. Natural Interaction Dynamics

How people work together is an important consideration no matter the group, but this is perhaps particularly true in co-creation and innovation projects where participants are working in small groups, often with strangers. This is also one of the areas where cultures can differ immensely.

In Brazil, our experience has shown us that groups readily adopt an equal and inclusive communication style regardless of status or role. Argument and debate could be considered the standard mode of communication with interruption being viewed as enthusiasm. So, in Brazil, the best results often come from working face to face.

Chinese social culture by comparison is more formal and respectful of status and role. Consumers tend to spontaneously interact less with one another in open innovation sessions, instead tending to talk more to the moderator. In our experience, Chinese consumers can be more likely to keep their opinions to themselves than in other cultures, relatively speaking, unless explicitly asked on an individual bases. There is an emphasis on maintaining harmony and finding a group consensus, rather than interjecting different and unconnected ideas.

This can make online a better research medium. We’ve seen an explosion of self-expression from online Chinese participants. The distance online provides can give consumers the opportunity express themselves more openly without being afraid of “rocking the boat” (See our blog post last month, “When Focus Groups Fail in Asia”).

4. Creative Processes

This might be good time to say that we believe that research – whether it is online or offline and no matter the culture – should always be fun and creative. Everyone can be creative. It’s just about finding the right way to access that creativity.

Different cultures approach creativity differently. This is an important thing to consider when thinking about how to structure open innovation projects.

For example, in our experience, Brazilian participants tend to approach creativity more from an emotional and abstract angle, talking about the intangible, rather than the physical. We’ve found that their thought processes can be very dynamic, jumping from point to point quickly. In order to facilitate this way of problem solving, we use techniques and tools that allow consumers to build in the rational and tangible, grounding the emotional and abstract in observable needs and benefits.

Meanwhile, we have found that Chinese participants can tend to be more rational and literal. In our experience, Chinese consumers might be less comfortable with ambiguous creative situations because independent, creative thought and risk taking are not valued as much as they are in other markets. Chinese people make great problem solvers, but pure inspiration and game changing ideas need to be carefully coached out of them. So, we like to ladder up to the final output logically and sequentially, building in the emotional and vaguer elements as we go. It’s a journey, one that is first literal and functional and then adds in the emotional building blocks.

Co-creation is a great tool for developing markets. The people have a lot to share and are often an untapped creative resource. With the right approach, the rewards for any agency or brand owner can be significant.

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