An EPIC Talk with: NIKHITA GHUGARI (Xeno Co-Lab, India) ROBERTO HOLGUIN (Fjord/Accenture, Mexico) TRULS ERIK JOHNSEN (EGGS Design, Norway) YUEBAI LIU (ri studio, UK) MOOWA MASANI (REACH Insights, South Africa) DINA MEHTA (Convo, India) SWAR RAISINGHANI (Xeno Co-Lab, India) Thursday, August 20, 2020 8:00–9:30am San Francisco / 10am Mexico City / 4pm London / 5pm Cape Town / 8:30pm Mumbai *Join 15 minutes early for informal intros & chatter with EPIC members & staff! This online event is free for EPIC Members Overview Culture and commerce are transnational and dynamic, but in many ways, corporations and organizations of all kinds still rely on a static map of the world. Traditional borders and metrics are used to create market segmentations, product and service offerings, organizational hierarchies, strategic plans, and daily work practices. This panel will tackle world regions conceptually and tactically, exploring the ways regional orientations help and hinder ethnographic work to create value for...

by YUEBAI LIU & JUNNI OGBORNE There’s a kind of building found across China that combines a Western-style “body” with a rather incongruous Chinese-style glazed tile roof plonked on top. This style of architecture had its heyday in the frenzy of the Great Leap Forward, when Chairman Mao ordered architects and engineers to design and construct ten gigantic buildings in Beijing in the space of just ten months. In indigenous Chinese architectural designs, tiled rooves are structurally integrated into the rest of the building through posts and beams. In these 1950s designs, the “Chinese hat” (dawuding, lit. “big roof”) is reduced to a decorative afterthought to give some vague Chinese character to the imported design. Architect Liang Sicheng criticized the mismatched structures as “wearing a Western suit with a Chinese hat.” Multinationals’ efforts to conquer the Chinese market often remind us of this “Chinese hat” analogy. Many times over the years living and working in China, we have seen marketers,...