One of the most profound misunderstandings between the West and the East revolves around utterly different strategic mindsets, this at many levels. Our talk will explore some of those differences:

-   What is strategy, and is it defined in the same way in the East and in the West?

-   The cultural backgrounds of strategic mindsets

–   An essentially analytically thinking West and an essentially systemically thinking East

–   Cultural differences as to ambiguity

–   Cultural differences as to the perception of time

-  Two archetypal strategy theoreticians: Sunzi and von Clausewitz

-   ...

Douwe van den Oever advises on strategic cooperation and conflict management, mainly focusing on Western Europe and Greater China.

Before that, he was a corporate strategist, and an information infrastructure strategist and implementation program manager, this, among others, for UBS, Allianz, Crédit Agricole, BNP Paribas, ZKB, and LCL.

Douwe teaches cross-cultural management at the Duale Hochschule Baden-Württemberg, a German university, and is a frequent speaker as to the re-emergence of a Chinese worldview and its significance for Western Europe (including keynotes for UBS, Deutsche Bank, Zurich’s ZHAW, the CIRD (中改院), Beijing University and Hong Kong Tech).

He is natively fluent in Dutch, English, French, and German, and is fluent in Mandarin Chinese (handwritten and spoken). Speeches have been given in all these languages.

Douwe van den Oever (DomainShift, Zurich) is a Dutch national, who grew up in France, has an MSc in pure mathematics from Leyden University in the Netherlands, and has studied classical and modern Chinese for several years, in Beijing and in Taipei, including for four years at National Taiwan University (ICLP).