I was brainstorming with a Chinese friend a while back, where I suggested the build of a lead generation site featuring translated mba-type education information. I thought such information will be in demand by millions of entreprenuers who do not have access (or, who doesn’t want to spend 2 years) to an mba education. The idea is to turn such lead generation site into a full fledge corporate training model, online and offline. Management training in bits, if you may. And, management training everywhere.
At one point during the conversation, my friend told me: anything readily available in English will not be of value to Chinese business people. They would have gotten access to them already. She’s totally right. First, a lot of educated Chinese can read and write English even though they cannot speak it. Second, Chinese are much more resourceful than we are here. If it exist somewhere on the web, they would have found it already.
Which then makes me think. There’s actually a much greater need for Chinese content to be aggregated/translated to English than the other way around. They know everything about us, and we know nothing about them. In the long run, this will certainly hurt us here. As such, I see future opportunities in information and data driven businesses such as market/consumer research, business intelligence and entertainment media focusing on China. Give me a shout if you are like-minded!
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Steve Rosenbaum pointed out in his comments below that “It’s not so much having access to information, it’s being able to understand it in a cultural context.” Excellent point. Do read.
It’s not so much having access to information, it’s being able to understand it in a cultural context. Here’s my example, I’ve dealt with a number of people in India that are fluent in English with advanced degrees.
They have a lot of knowledge about American’s but misunderstand a number of things because of the cultural differences. I assume that China is similar.
Here’s my example. I’ve looked at a number of training programs from India that are cultural training for dealing with Americans.
One of the things they don’t quite get is that there isn’t a typical American or how different American’s really are. It’s really much more extensive than any other country. Just ask yourself, “what does an American look like?”
The answer is, “just about anything, any race, any color and ethnic group, etc.”
Second, the don’t have a culture of individual liberty or the concept of the rugged individual. But it’s in everthing we do.
We also have trouble dealing with India and China because the culture and values are so different.
Thinking they know a lot about us and we know little about them simply isn’t true. We’re kinda of equally confused.
I remember people in India telling me they thought American’s couldn’t wait to get on Social Security so they could live the good life.