Understand Culture – Keep Your Foot Out of Your Mouth
On the Windows 95 operating system, Microsoft chose to color 800,000 pixels a slightly different shade of green which, unknown to Microsoft, represented disputed Kashmiri territory in India. The different color was interpreted in India as meaning that the territory was not part of their country. The product was promptly banned by the nation and 200,000 copies of the system were returned. Had the team at Microsoft taken more time to understand culture, the losses – both moneta