Paul Waddle works for Tripod Capital (Tripod), a venture fund focused on investing globally in fintech start-ups. Ambitious and a self-starter, Waddle is in pursuit of fast-growing the Nigerian payments platform DigitApt. As he enters the final stages of closing a deal, he is confronted with cultural differences between US and Nigerian work practices and traditions. Understanding and appropriately integrating these differences could be the key to adding DigitApt to his portfolio and continuing his steady upward rise at Tripod. This vignette is meant to serve as the kind of scenario one encounters increasingly in the world of business (and society in general) where seemingly opposing forces coexist and require careful analysis, interpretation, and synthesis.
