Fish Can't See Water: How National Culture Can Make or Break Your Corporate Strategy

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

No work on cross-culture escapes the influence of Ed Schein and Geert Hofstede, and we would like to acknowledge their pioneering of central concepts which figure prominently in this book.

Numerous multicultural people have helped inspire us in the creation of the central ideas in our book, including: the Asian brand expert Martin Roll, Lars Terney of Nordic Capital, Mikkel B. Rasmussen of ReD Associates, Jørgen Vig Knudstorp of Lego, Tue Mantoni of B&O, Jim Hagemann Snabe of SAP, Juha Äkräs and Stephen Elop of Nokia, Vagn Sørensen of FLSmidth, Niels B. Christansen of Danfoss, Barbara Annis of Barbara Annis & Associates and Dean Stamoulis of Russell Reynolds Associates, Karsten Feilberg, Kim Berknov, Jens Schultzer, Christian Mariager, John Youngblood and Bill Hoover.

We would like to thank everyone at Wiley for their thoughtful editing, and in particular our publisher, Rosemary Nixon for her constructive comments and unwavering support. Rosemary also introduced us to our development editor, Katherine Armstrong, who had a profound influence on the final structure of the manuscript and helped crystalize many of the key messages, through many long and sometimes challenging, but always enjoyable conversations.

Finally, this book would not have been possible without the daily support of Frances Phillips and Ceri Erskine, who have read the manuscript many times and suggested multiple improvements.

Richard D. Lewis and Kai Hammerich

London, July 2013