Advancing the Value of Ethnography

Genre: Perspective

Rethinking Financial Literacy with Design Anthropology

Rethinking Financial Literacy with Design Anthropology

Marietta is 61 years old. She takes care of her adult son (unemployed) and her daughter-in-law (disabled), both of whom live with her in a simple 3-bedroom house on the wrong side of the freeway. Her rent is sky-high, because in Silicon Valley rents are crazy on both sides of the freeway. Marietta...

Luis Arnal / A Profile

Luis Arnal / A Profile

"Innovation Lives at the Borders" Luis could talk forever about his passion for INSITUM. He doesn’t like to showcase himself as the company’s front man, but in fact, he leads one of the most important innovation consultancies in the world, with over 120 consultants, 7 offices and more than 1400...

Satin Island: An Appreciation

Satin Island: An Appreciation

I will admit that as soon as I heard there was a newly published novel about a corporate anthropologist, I took the bait and grabbed a copy (metaphorically, of course, given that I in fact downloaded an e-book). How would my world and my work be represented in fiction? What truths or myths might...

Yes, Virginia, We “Do Ethnography” in Business Schools

Yes, Virginia, We “Do Ethnography” in Business Schools

One of the most common questions I get at EPIC is, “You do ethnography in business schools?" So ken anderson invited me to write a response to this recurring question. I’ll break the response into three topic areas: (1) the use of ethnography and its status vis-à-vis research on management; (2)...

Building a Useful Research Tool: An Origin Story of AEIOU

Building a Useful Research Tool: An Origin Story of AEIOU

It is awfully nice not to have to invent a basic tool over and over again. For ethnographers, coding and categorization is work that has to happen whether you are studying housework or neurosurgery, with novices or experts, in an exotic location or in suburban Ohio (no offense to my friends and...

ken anderson / A Profile

ken anderson / A Profile

EPIC Profiles Series [based on an interview with ken at the Intel Jones Farm Campus, Hillsboro, Oregon, August 25, 2014] “Nobody liked them. No sense of humor.” These days ken anderson may not talk much about the French ethnographers he interacted with in Portugal’s Azores—or about his...

Creating Ethnography

Creating Ethnography

What is an anthropologist? What does an ethnographer actually do? I used to believe that my own answers to these questions were sufficient. In reality, however, the existential dilemma at the foundation of any institution—academic, professional, or otherwise—is a socially constructed affair. In...