Ethnographic Research: A Key to Strategy

Ken Anderson (ken.anderson@intel.com) un ricercatore ed antropologo presso Intel, ha scritto un breve articolo per Harvard Business Review sull’importanza dell’etngrafia aziendale.

Ethnography is the branch of anthropology that involves trying to understand how people live their lives. Unlike traditional market
researchers, who ask specific, highly practical questions, anthropological researchers visit consumers in their homes or offices to
observe and listen in a nondirected way. Our goal is to see people’s behavior on their terms, not ours. While this observational method
may appear inefficient, it enlightens us about the context in which customers would use a new product and the meaning that product
might hold in their lives.
Recently, Intel ethnographers have veered into strategic questions. Like many high-tech companies, Intel makes long-term bets on how
markets will play out. Will television and PC technology converge? Are baby boomers retaining their PC and TV habits as they age, or
are they comfortable shifting to new media? Will smartphones take over most of the functions of personal computers?
By understanding how people live, researchers discover otherwise elusive trends that inform the company’s future strategies. Our
job as anthropologists is to understand the perspective of one tribe, consumers, and communicate it to another, the people at Intel. Our
experiences in both worlds make this translation possible. Ethnography has proved so valuable at Intel that the company now employs
two dozen anthropologists and other trained ethnographers, probably the biggest such corporate staff in the world...I believe that ethnography is so beneficial
that it will spread widely, helping firms in every industry truly understand customers and adapt to fast-changing markets.