This paper addresses a misalignment between market motivations and community needs in Web3, arguing that...
Tag: finance
Mattresses & Moneyboxes: Cultural Affordances for Microfinance in Jordan
*Apologies for the poor sound quality. We're working on it and hope to have an improved version available soon. Case Study—This case study will present how a multicultural and multidisciplinary team from EPAM Continuum, the global innovation design firm, gathered, analyzed, and presented back...
Operationalizing Ethnographic Research to Grow Trust in Digital Financial Services
Case Study—Trust motivates people’s uptake and use of digital financial services (DFS). Understanding the socio-cultural determinants of DFS trust are needed to scale financial access and drive financial inclusion. These are core components of international development strategies, such as the...
Ethnography as a Catalyst for Organizational Change: Creating a Multichannel Customer Experience
This paper describes how ethnography became a catalyst for organizational change in a leading financial institution by providing a collaborative context for functional groups to come together in co-creating a multichannel customer banking experience. While consumers increasingly expect a good...
Anthro-Vision: A New Way to See in Business and Life
Anthro-Vision: A New Way to See in Business and Life Gillian Tett 2021, 304 pp, Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster → Watch Simon Roberts in conversation with Gillian Tett & Donna Flynn Ulf Hannerz once proposed that “common sense is cultural ‘business as usual’; standard operating...
Navigating Value and Vulnerability with Multiple Stakeholders: Systems Thinking, Design Action and the Ways of Ethnography
A growing cadre of organizations, corporations, NGOs and philanthropic foundations seek to address difficult global problems like poverty using social innovation and technology. Such problems are multivalent, deep-rooted, ever changing and culturally specific. Amid this complicated terrain,...
Outside the Bubble: How a Coastal Technology Company Built Empathy for Its Small Business Owner Customers in America’s Heartland
This case examines an effort by San Francisco-based Square to gain a better understanding of its customers who reside outside of major metropolitan areas. The first part of the case provides detail on research: a mobile ethnography study of small business owners conducted over a two-week period at...
Meaningful Innovation: Ethnographic Potential in the Startup and Venture Capital Spheres
The aim of this paper is to explore the potential for ethnographic approaches in technology startups and the venture capital firms that support and control them. The current practices and model of innovation aim for “disruptive innovation,” but most efforts fall short, prioritizing mass diffusion...
Tutorial: MBA Basics – How to Think Like a Business
Tutorial Instructors: SUMMARY This tutorial will provide you with a foundational understanding of how businesses operate from financial, organizational, and strategic standpoints. However, rather than providing...
Ethnographer on Wall Street: Karen Ho / A Profile
EPIC Profiles Series What do sentiments and ideologies have to do with Wall Street? Karen Ho would argue they are key for understanding and changing Wall Street’s institutional culture that generates and justifies a focus on the short-term. From working in a firm to interviewing workers and...