Culture eats strategy for breakfast, again

Howard Yu
LEGO professor of management and innovation at IMD business school in Singapore and Switzerland

PREMIUM

Singapore / Thu, March 29, 2018 / 11:06 am

Culture eats strategy for breakfast, again

Grab, a ride-hailing and logistic service business via mobile app, has announced it's taking over Uber's South East Asia's operation starting April 9, 2018. (Shutterstock.com/Hemin Xylan)

As Uber bows out to Grab, we learn that even in the land of internet, personal culture still wins over global tech giants’ blanket global strategy. Does the American dream not work for Asia? In the understandably optimistic Silicon Valley, any startup has the potential to produce miracles, with promises of marvels and golden uplands. Entrepreneurs on the West Coast always have reasons to look ahead to a distant frontier, as the world markets can be conquered by the switch of an algorithm. Such has been the business strategy and, in fact, the business mentality of Google, Amazon, Facebook, Airbnb, Uber, Snapchat, WeWork, Dropbox, and practically every other company from the Valley. So when mighty Uber bowed out to Grab this week in Southeast Asia, following its earlier retreats from China and Russia, academics and commentators saw not so much a personal defeat of Uber&rsquo...