Cultural Collaboration in Entrepreneurship

Introduction

The clock is ticking. The year 2030 is approaching. 7 years left from today. UN member countries, government agencies, companies, and non-governmental agencies, set many of their long-term sustainable goals by the year 2030, goals aligning the United Nation’s thematic 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. At its heart are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are an urgent call for action by all countries – developed and developing – in a global partnership. They recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go together with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests. (UN). The SDG 17 goals are a wide framework set to be achieved by 2030. As of now, work is in progress. However, we have only 7 years left and still more actions and efforts are needed to attain these goals. One of the many efforts to work on these goals is through cultural collaboration. Although arts and culture as one pillar for sustainability is missing in the 17 thematic agenda of the SGDs, many of the actions and efforts done to achieve these goals are through culture. It may not be explicitly and tangibly mentioned, but countries work hand in hand to complete projects and efforts are made through cultural collaborations. It is a vehicle for attaining many of the SDG goals related to economic prosperity.

It is very imperative then to understand what cultural collaboration is and point out its significance in creating business ideas and driving business growth.

As a multi-cultural community, Poakatemia is an avenue to further foster cultural collaboration in the entrepreneurial ventures of each team. And as a traveler, experienced logistic support abroad and an international student, I would like to share my cross-cultural experiences and highlight the benefits I gained. When cultural collaboration is done right, there are measurable advantages it can bring to business growth.

Significance of Cultural Collaboration

When people from different cultures joint together and create an organization in the form of a culture, which comprise of people from every culture. They share their own values, norms, religion social background, tradition, language, lifestyle, dress codes, ethics and much more. They create a culture where everybody shares his own values and common purpose. Such like collaboration occurs in the business community. (Edubirdie 2021). Working together from diverse backgrounds provides a wider perspective and understanding, not only promoting teamwork but opens new business opportunities. Considering cultural differences can be uncomfortable in a team sometimes but recognizing the dynamic, diversity, and keeping an eye on these differences rather than devaluing them can better equipped you to have more respect on cultural differences and achieve creative ideas in the team and for the business allows new product and service invention to emerge in the market and secure Getting to know more personally can further collaborate efficiently and avoid unintentional inferences and assumptions on one’s cultural background. Ground. Cultural awareness and collaboration can also lead to more organizational trust and minimizing misunderstanding. Openness and adaptability are keys to ensure that cultural collaboration can work for a fruitful result. Cultural collaboration can foster creative innovation as thoughts, creative skills and backgrounds are diverse. Countries and companies collaborate in venturing further business prosperity. Microsoft and Toyota collaborated for intelligent energy consumption, Coca-Cola, and Heinz to develop more sustainable containers (Turiera 2013) and CPEC (Pak-China economic corridor) a business collaboration between Pakistan and China for economic rationalization in the globalized world for peace, development, and economic growth in the region (CPEC Secretariat). The combination of capabilities allows for new inventions of products and services to emerge in the market and securing strategic economic power in the business world. It enhanced creativity and gained further profitability. Embracing multi-cultural perspectives and collaborating across cultures can unlock trans-formative solutions to any business segment.

My cross-culture experience

I had invaluable work experience from a multi-cultural company abroad. I worked in sales and logistic support for a lighting company with offices and factories in Europe and Asia and clients were in the Middle East. My colleagues were from various parts of the world too. I was exposed to international business policies and practices as well as different working cultures. Honestly, it was tough but as years passed by, I was able to adapt and became proactive in dealing with different people from distinct cultures. It was a growth opportunity for me to gain a wider perspective about dealing with different people and adapt flexibility with my working system. Communication is a crucial part for any cultural collaboration effort for business endeavor. During the Nordic Business Forum 2022, Meyer begins her deep dive by putting up the spectrum or scale on which cultures can fall for communicating. What’s at issue is how much context each culture expects or assumes prior to verbalizing things—as well as between and after verbalization. She refers to one end of the scale as “low context” and the other “high context”. Low Context cultures assume little to no shared references. They tend to be very literal and explanatory in nature. Meyer notes that on the graph above, English-speaking countries tend to be on the Low Context end of the spectrum. This is because English is a very literal language. Within that group, some cultures who speak English still manage to be higher context than others—as Meyer explains in the case of the UK vs. the US—where there’s more “inside lingo,” as it were. High context cultures assume a lot of shared references and background. As an example, the word kal in Hindi means both “yesterday” and” today.” This means that we only understand what the person using it meant based on the context in which they used the word. Many Asian cultures tend to operate much like this. (NBF 2022) Indeed communication was my biggest challenge when I was working abroad. If someone has no orientation, awareness and adaptability, this communication barrier will be a block to build trust, strengthen collaboration, harmonious working relationship and eventually business prosperity.

My previous work experience in a multi-cultural industry influenced me to travel to various places. Aside from being in a new place, marveling the beauty of nature, amazed by human ingenuity in arts and structural designs around, the most serendipitous moment I would have when I travel is the chance to engage and interact with the locals, immigrants, and other travelers. These simple and short interactions made me feel more connected to that place, their history and culture.

Proakatemia is an ideal place to foster cultural collaboration for business opportunities. As entrepreneurs in the making, Proakatemians can collaborate well either working in your team from diverse cultural backgrounds or collaborating with other teams or the alumni from different nationalities too. This is how enriching an environment like Proakatemia is. A simple discussion and ideation can get collaboration in action to work on valuable business ideas. And as they said, it doesn’t necessarily need to be 100% right and successful, what matters most are the learning experiences and developing oneself to be better.

Belonging to Kaaos as an international team, allows me to deep dive on working my business ideas through cultural collaboration. Firstly, it molds me to obtain a wider understanding about different working styles and perception on things. What are okey for me might not be agreeable to them. Simple things should not be ignored as it is part of understanding, building trust, and creating an entrepreneurial relationship. As shared by our guest speaker Yayah Sonkoh in one of our paja this term, he pointed out that underdeveloped, developing and developed countries view entrepreneurship differently. So, when doing business collaboration from any of this country, one must try to understand how economic background differentiates it is thinking about creating business. For underdeveloped countries, creating a business idea is centered for profit making, while developing countries are more on status quo and developed countries focused on problem solution. So, experiencing a cross-cultural environment shapes entrepreneurs to play a significant position in stimulating creativity, innovation, and business growth. I hope this simple move of my business ideas in Proakatemia, doing cultural collaboration could also take a small share of the UN’s SDG goals.

Conclusion

Cultural collaboration has unique challenges but when rightly done is an enormously powerful way to achieve valuable business opportunities, generate higher creativity, purposeful innovation, deep relationship, better teamwork, wider network coverage, business prosperity, and economic growth. Cultural collaboration is more effective than imposing our own ideas in a multi-cultural environment. My cross-cultural experiences build confidence in me to thrive for my entrepreneurial journey in this new country with different people from various parts of the world. It also creates a sense of pride in me, that little it can be, I shared a part of working on the SDG goals. Regardless of our color, status, and places where we come from, by working together for common and equal gain, we feel the power to succeed and achieve deeper values of prosperity.

References

Atlassian. 2023. 4 Keys to Successful Cross-Cultural Collaboration.

Read on 5.11.2023

4 keys to successful cross-cultural collaboration

CPEK Secretariat 2023. CPECS Publication. Read on 2.11.2023

https://cpec.gov.pk/

Edubirdie. 2021. Multicultural Collaboration And Its Significance.

Read on 2.11.2023

https://edubirdie.com/examples/multicultural-collaboration-and-its-significance/

Turiera, T. & Cros, S. 2013. Co-Society.

50 Examples of Business Collaboration. Barcelona, Spain. Zero Factory SL.

Read on 2.11.2023

https://www.co-society.com/wp-content/uploads/CO_business_2013.pdf

UN 2023. The 17 SDG. Read on 01.11.2023

https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/