The first virtual event of the year brought together three accomplished panellists who took the time to share their wealth of expertise in international business, innovation, and enterprise resilience. They were Deepak Goel, Founder and Managing Director of Drizzlin Media, Karl Villanueva, Co-Founder and C MO/CPO of Ostrom and Riccardo Benussi, Partner at Dezan Shira & Associates. Janise Tan, Google Developer Experts Lead for EMEA, moderated the discussion on navigating the complexities of global markets, fostering creativity, and building future-ready organisations.
Tech and sustainability
Despite the current geopolitical tensions and political pushback, the panellists still saw opportunities around sustainability and ESG for entrepreneurs moving between and across Southeast Asia and Europe. The intersections of digital spaces and F&B, for instance around food waste, was an example Deepak cited as worth further exploration.
With Janise moderating, it was only natural that AI featured in discussions around opportunities. Karl pointed out that while it would be easy to lose oneself in high level AI strategy the biggest productivity gains from AI are at an individual level and turning the unstructured into structured. Riccardo’s consultancy work, in contrast, required a more cautious approach to AI while staying open. All panellists nevertheless agreed that it was the removal of repetitious tasks that brought the best leverage of AI tools.
Using culture to foster resilience
Karl leaned heavily on using innovation and diversity in teasing out new unknown opportunities. Moreover, for him embedding diversity in the workforce very early on in the business was necessary to retain and sustain a culture of innovation or risk losing good people.
Deepak warned against conflating culture with nationality or falling into stereotypes. His company’s own culture book helped to engage new hires and walk them through both universal and unique organisational culture codes. While being fully aware and accepting of differences there are universal norms that lend to human respect and a good working culture. For a company with remote workers, they revamped the term “hybrid” to bring everyone to, not only work, but also to live together for a week. Enabling the personal, non-office connection formed through after work conversations has been transformational for building cohesion and strengthening the way they work together.
Deepak and Karl extrapolated from their multiple cultural experiences to harness diversity more broadly for innovation and resilience from within. On the other hand, Riccardo’s advice leaned towards the depth and specifics of financial planning and business intel to get things right using local knowledge and capacity to understand diverse consumer culture and the very different legal and financial systems.
Go local
Riccardo emphasised the importance of innovating to stay relevant and pointed out that many European investors were too focused on past successes they ignored the present dynamism and competition. An advice he gave was to learn and understand the individual market well and never to travel just for a tradeshow or weekend. He touched on the mistakes other European investors made by sitting on the laurels of past successes and ignoring the present competition and dynamism out in the Asian markets.
A common thread in the discussions and advice given was the need to always keep an open mind and be willing to learn. Harnessing cultural arbitrage, whether Europe to Southeast Asia or vice versa, is a key advantage that Deepak cited for Southeast Asian entrepreneurs and something that members of SEEA know all too well.
Regulatory changes do remain a common stumbling block for businesses operating across borders and Karl cited an advice he always appreciated receiving, which was to never scrimp on a good lawyer. Riccardo urged budding entrepreneurs to not only invest in a proper business intelligence analysis but also understand available opportunities that stem from the various new free trade agreements between the two regions.
The backgrounds of the panellists and moderator created an interesting blend of perspectives on innovation and building a resilient business. From leveraging AI to dealing with regulatory environments, the advice and insights provided by the three panellists reflected their different yet complementary approaches to successfully navigating the challenges of operating in diverse, dynamic, and cross-border markets. A big thank you to our panellists and moderator for the insightful virtual European lunch time discussion.

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