What companies miss when scaling across cultures

Scaling a business in one country is hard enough. But doing it across several markets and bridging diverse cultures? That’s a challenge even for the most experienced entrepreneurs.

That is also where many expansion playbooks fall short.

The biggest failures happen when companies misread people, according to Vincent Lauria, a global investor at Golden Gate Ventures, and Stefano Pellegrino, a three-time founder and international lawyer. That includes misunderstanding what incentives mean to individuals, what their fears are, and how their values shape their behavior.

(From left) Stefano Pellegrino and Vincent Lauria / Photo credit: The authors

In their book, Mind the Gap: Scaling Businesses Across Cultures, published by Wiley in 2026, the authors argue that international expansion is less about replicating what has worked at home and more about understanding how different cultures view ownership, risk, and responsibility.

Specifically, they break down how these differences play out in practice and why applying your own logic in a foreign market can backfire in unexpected ways.

You can learn more about this in the book excerpt below, titled “Mind the ‘scale of values’ in your target country.” It is published with permission from Wiley and has been moderately edited to reflect Tech in Asia’s editorial guidelines.

The values underneath the business

When Queen Elizabeth II died, she was laid in state in London’s Westminster Hall. Thousands of her longtime subjects then queued up in a line that stretched for miles, waiting their turn to file past the closed casket and, if they wished, say a personal goodbye to the queen.

Comedian Trevor Noah felt moved to comment on the spectacle. Speaking to an American audience, well known for queuing overnight for each new iPhone release, he said he was amazed by how long some people in London were willing to wait.

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“Twenty-two hours in line – that’s no joke,” he said. “Twenty-two hours! Because remember, there’s no iPhone at the end of that line. It’s just a box. And you don’t even get to open the box.”

Noah drew laughs by poking fun at the two countries’ different scales of values. Why would people submit to such an endurance test?

For many Americans, the chance to buy a hot new product will do it. Meanwhile, for many Britons, it’s the chance to pay respects to a dead monarch who symbolized a bygone age. The values strike radically opposite chords, hence the humor.

But it’s not a laughing matter when you do business in a country where the scale of values is unfamiliar to you.

What this means for your firm’s expansion across cultures