Improvised Resourcefulness (“Resolver”)
If you want to understand how Dominicans innovate, start with the word resolver — to find a way, to sort it out with whatever is on hand. Innovation here usually looks less like a formal R&D process and more like quick, clever, practical problem-solving. People are exceptionally good at building a workable solution out of limited resources, fast, and they are comfortable with a fix that is good enough rather than perfect. When you work with Dominican colleagues, frame challenges as problems to be resolved, not as projects requiring months of planning, and give them room to improvise. Don’t mistake a scrappy, made-do solution for a lack of capability — it is the capability. Bring them a constraint and a deadline and you will often get a creative answer; bring them a rigid spec with no flexibility and you waste their greatest strength.
Innovation Travels Through Relationships
In the Dominican Republic, new ideas, deals and solutions move through people, not through systems. Who you know and who trusts you is the real infrastructure for getting anything done — a problem gets solved with a phone call to the right contact, funding comes through networks built on personal trust, and talent gets discovered by people who know people. If you are trying to drive innovation or change with Dominican partners, invest in the relationships first; trust is not a nicety here, it is how work actually happens. Spend real time building genuine personal connection before you expect results, and understand that mobilizing the right people is itself seen as a skillful, creative act. A strategy that relies only on formal channels and ignores the relational layer will move slowly. A warm, trusted relationship will open doors that no process can.
Reinventing What Already Exists
Dominican creativity tends to take something familiar and make it new, rather than inventing from a blank page. You see it in the music — merengue and bachata constantly modernized and fused with new sounds while staying recognizably themselves — and you see it in business and technology, where existing models get adapted cleverly to local conditions. When you pitch something new to Dominican colleagues, connect it to something they already know and value; frame innovation as a renewal or a fresh take on a recognized idea, not as a total break with the past. Novelty that is rooted in a familiar form gets adopted quickly and makes the innovator look good. Novelty that feels like it is discarding everything people know will meet more resistance. The smart move is to honor the tradition and build on top of it.
Start Now, Adjust as You Go
Dominicans generally prefer to begin and then adapt, rather than plan exhaustively before acting. There is real comfort with starting before every detail is settled, taking an imperfect first step, and adjusting in motion — an instinct reinforced by an optimistic, faith-tinged confidence that a path will open (“si Dios quiere”). If you are leading an innovation effort, lean into this: launch small pilots, iterate quickly, and treat early action as a way to learn rather than a risk to be eliminated first. Don’t hold everything back waiting for a perfect plan — that reads as slow and overcautious. At the same time, recognize that this preference for action means details get worked out along the way, so build in light check-ins and stay flexible. Speed and adaptability are the strength; rigid, front-loaded planning fights against the grain.
The Informal System Runs Beside the Official One
In the Dominican Republic there is the official way something is supposed to work, and there is the informal way it actually gets done — and the informal way is usually faster, more flexible and more trusted. This is not corruption or disrespect for institutions; it is a practical understanding that the parallel, relationship-based system responds to real conditions in real time. When you work here, expect people to satisfy the formal requirement while getting the real result through informal channels, and learn to operate fluently in both. If something is stuck in an official process, the solution is often a person, not a procedure. Design your initiatives so they can run through informal, personal, adaptable channels rather than depending entirely on impersonal systems. The colleague who knows how to switch between the formal and the informal is the one who gets things done.