Recent article I wrote for IPRA's Frontline magazine:
Working for a pioneering company in the cultural integration of East and West, I should have known better. In a meeting with a colleague from Beijing, I mentioned a tactic to keep in reserve and use as needed during the Olympics. I suggested having the plan “in our back pocket” for future use. Instead of a nod, I got a quizzical look. It didn’t help much when I explained the idea to her, either.
“Why not keep it in your front pocket if it’s important?”
Good question and just one more speed bump on the way to cultural integration or as my colleagues in China say – harmony.
We’ve been on this road for about three years at Lenovo as we took on the unique challenge of blending an iconic, Western brand (ThinkPad, formerly of IBM) with an Eastern personal computing powerhouse (Lenovo, formerly Legend). The “new world, new thinking” approach we adopted for leadership, talent, supply chain, organizational structure, product development and innovation would, in time, coalesce into a unique strategic concept and philosophical approach to business called worldsourcing.
Posted by Reid at February 8, 2009 07:20 PM