30. Scaling APAC: Why China, AI, and regional leadership cannot be managed from 10,000 km away — with Cedric Delzenne

About this episode

"There is no way you can micromanage anyone in China — and certainly not from ten thousand kilometers away."

Most Western companies expanding into APAC build one regional strategy and apply it across the board. One pipeline. One dashboard. One assumption about what it means to operate in Asia. The region keeps proving that assumption wrong — expensively.

In this episode, Kevin Hong speaks with Cedric Delzenne, a French executive with over 20 years of international experience across Europe, the US, Brazil, and Asia, and more than 15 years based in Hong Kong. As the founding Managing Director APAC of Fifty-Five, a digital analytics and AI consultancy, Cedric built a regional presence from scratch — from Hong Kong to Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Taipei — navigating China's data sovereignty laws, the HQ–local trust gap, and the structural realities of a region most headquarters misread as a single market.

Five threads: why APAC is a kaleidoscope of markets that cannot be managed as one; why Hong Kong remains a stronger regional launch base than Singapore for most foreign firms; why China's AI advantage is more cultural and structural than technical; why the real value of AI is in rewiring operating models, not adding tools; and why trust — not strategy — is the first thing a regional leader must build.

In this episode:

• Why treating APAC as one market is the most costly assumption a foreign HQ makes — and what market-level translation actually looks like in practice

• The Hong Kong versus Singapore decision: what most Western companies get wrong about cost, banking, salary inflation, and regional mobility

• How China's open-source LLM approach and cultural risk appetite are creating a structural AI edge over Europe — and why boards need physical presence, not media coverage

• Why the companies that win with AI won't have the best tools — they'll have the most rewired operating models

If you are building or advising in Asia, leading a cross-border technology or consulting practice, or placing senior executives into the region — this one is for you.

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If the topics discussed resonate with your own leadership challenges or the conversations happening in your organization - assessing international leaders, aligning global and local teams, building capabilities across regions. You can reach us at LYC Partners to set up a consultation.

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Produced by Bonjour Podcast (Melanie Hong), Leaders in Motion blends storytelling, strategy, and data-driven insight, giving today’s leaders a roadmap to anticipate tomorrow’s challenges and lead with intention.

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