Teaching methodologies and uses of competitive intelligence and competitive technical intelligence in countries where the culture and the technological level are very different from the western world cannot be implemented without a cultural understanding of the tacit local knowledge and cultural behavior of people. As an example of research-action, we have chosen two Indonesian regions: Sulawesi Utara (North Sulawesi) and Tapanuli Utara (North Sumatra). We have applied in these territories the methodology of positive turbulence coupled with Competitive Intelligence and Competitive Technical Intelligence. In this paper we analyze the cultural brakes and levers present in an Indonesian context, and then describe two different approaches to developing an action plan based on postgraduate education, in one case in an industrial city in North Sulawesi and in the other case in Cottage Industry (CI) clusters in a rural zone of North Sumatra. (Contains 6 figures and 1 table.)