With design thinking gaining popularity beyond a manner to innovate better products/services, more companies are increasingly exploring design thinking as a way to bring forth system or human behavior change within the corporate environment.
To facilitate this, corporate ethnography, which is an arm of anthropology, gains popularity. Objective being to be human-centered and to not adopt the traditional way of directed-research, but observing people in their natural context.
Here i will share 5 of the 10 ways mentioned in the article i read of how corporate ethnography can be used to help corporate/individuals gain deeper and more valuable insights:
- Multiple Layers of Subjectivity. Think of yourself as someone who immerse in other people’s subjectivity and listen, watch, learn and seek to understand their world as they do. The key is to understand their internal logic and meaning around the topic at hand. It will also be common to be involved in multiple people’s world views simultaneously. Through this, and with comparison, we will be able to recognize persistent patterns where deeper and more robust insights can be gained.
- Zooming Out for Context. The key is to take opportunity to step back early to understand the larger context. By doing so, deeper layer of significance can be understood as steps such as insight gathering, interpretation and synthesis will fall into place around a stronger base.
- Extremes and Analogies. “Extreme people” refer to people at the margins of the topic at hand or even at the boundaries of society in general. “Analogous cases” are situations with similar characteristics to the core domain of interest but able to provide new models for thinking. These 2 types of cases help magnify details that we may otherwise overlook and they reveal new insights by challenging us to rethink the more conventional ways of interpretations.
- Open-Source Interpretation. This means to collaborate with other people beyond the usual pool of people, which ensures findings are more robust and useful as multiple interpreters are engaged. This helps reduce skepticism by allowing first-hand involvement, provides a common ground to unify and motivate teams and provide another mean of triangulation in interpretation.
- Cultural Forces. It is key to go beyond physical interaction or emotional experiences with a brand’s touch points and seek to understand the effects of cultural forces around them and how it influences where they head to. By understanding an individual in the context of cultural forces, deeper insights can be gained about what may have shaped the ways someone thinks, feels, and behaves, as well as where they may move and how they may change.
By now you may have realized that corporate ethnography is beyond a tool of design thinking, but a mindset that can be applied to many corporate challenges. The biggest impact of corporate ethnography will be to uncover opportunities that mutually benefit all who participate in the economic and social network.
Stay Curious Always!
Z
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