Cultural issues could have a massive impact on our project. We are attempting to introduce a food item that is largely unknown the population of Sierra Leone. This affects our project in two ways. From a production standpoint, our job is made much more difficult by the fact that no one there (to our knowledge) has ever grown mushrooms commercially. Because mushrooms are not entrenched in the culture (like in Cambodia), it will be more difficult to teach people how to grow them. From a sales standpoint, we don’t know if people will eat mushrooms. If they do, how does this get integrated into the local cuisine? Culture around selling will also is vital for our project. How will mushrooms fair sitting on the tables in the local food markets. For something new do they have the requisite curb appeal so that people will try them? They also could be sold to supermarkets and sold at a significant markup if they are seen as a luxury.”

Incentives are used all around the world in just about every culture in order to get people to do things. In my town however we saw what happens when you take away an incentive. In my school district, it used to be that teachers got a small bonus for every off day they didn’t use. During that time, I might never have had a teacher miss class more than once or twice. Over a 30-40 year career, that resulted in a half million-dollar bonus. Once this was taken away teachers started ensuring that used every single day as payback. Since then it is now fairly frequent that a teacher will be out. While not at home, I did see some interesting social situations play out in Antigua. At one primary school, we helped to put on a career day. All of the kids came in dressed as what they wanted to be once they grew up. It was interesting to see how many kids wanted to be doctors or other professions that would require a college degree (which they are very unlikely to receive). A large resistance to change is something that could certainly derail any venture. People in my town are obsessed with maintaining the feeling they get from our town’s actual name, the Village of Ridgewood. This idea of a village is something people go at great length to protect. Whether it’s renovating the hospital so that they don’t take their world-class heart center with them (they left) or fighting literally every development (especially low income housing), they seem to just hate change.

In much of the world (especially the USA) we eat an environmentally damaging amount of meat. Many people are saying that in the future the only sustainable way to feed the growing population will be through plant-based foods. A Short-term compromise however, would be to replacing by far the most damaging animal, the cow, with other much more environmentally friendly and healthy red meats such as alpacas or Kangaroos. Kangaroos especially since they are reaching massive numbers and are considered a pest by many Australians. They also produce very little methane when compared to most animals we use. A college education is way to expensive. As technology both improves and becomes an even more important part of our culture high quality digitized universities can force the cost of university down. Currently people seem wary, but they are rising in popularity. In many cultures, American products and companies are perceived to have higher quality that similar products and companies from other countries. This can be leveraged in marketing and can help inspire confidence in a product.