MARKETS whether users at home would become
By understanding how people
Ethnographic
Research:
A Key to Strategy
by Ken Anderson
Corporate ethnography isn’t just for in-
novation anymore. It’s central to gaining
a full understanding of your customers
and the business itself. The ethnographic
work at my company, Intel, and other
firms now informs functions such as
strategy and long-range planning.
Ethnography is the branch of anthro-
pology that involves trying to understand
how people live their lives. Unlike tradi-
tional market researchers, who ask spe-
cific, highly practical questions, anthro-
pological 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 mean-
ing that product might hold in their lives.
Ethnography at Intel initially focused
on new markets. The company had
provided products only for the work-
place, but in 1995 managers wondered
SEARCHING FOR CLARITY
Learning from Heroes
by Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten
Like Hercules, Luke Skywalker, and Jack
Welch, we all struggle with five recurring
challenges as we journey through work
and life: We wander without knowing
where we’re going. Data and circum-
stances confuse us. Fear blocks us from
acting. Change paralyzes us. And despite
our best intentions, we talk more than
we listen.
An examination of business writing
from the past 30 years shows that these
challenges emerge again and again – and
the best books offer simple yet profound
lessons for overcoming them: Find a
clear purpose. Be aware that past ex-
perience and a mass of information can
24 Harvard Business Review | March 2009
1875 Mar09 FT layout.indd 24
services.
a distinct market. Ethnographic research
showed so much potential that Intel set
up a business unit to concentrate on pro-
cessors and platforms for home use.
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?
Intel can analyze the latest buying
patterns and customer surveys for useful
data. But people often can’t articulate
what they’re looking for in products or
interfere with wise decisions. Maintain a
bias toward action. Be open to change.
Seek feedback.
In the 1980s, for instance, Thomas
Peters and Robert Waterman’s In Search
of Excellence showed how exemplar
companies instilled a bias for action
by replacing reports, committees, and
protocols with frequent conversation
and relentless prototyping. In the 1990s,
Robert Kaplan and David Norton’s The
Balanced Scorecard demonstrated how
the careful use of data can support
good judgment. And in 1999, Thomas
Friedman’s The Lexus and the Olive Tree
described how change – in the form of
globalization – can be freeing rather than
paralyzing.
The five lessons feed into one another.
Clarity of purpose provides wisdom in
| hbr.org
live, researchers discover otherwise
elusive trends that inform the company’s
future strategies. With smartphones, for
example, we can contrast the technol-
ogy perspectives of teenagers, who
have used cell phones since they were
in elementary school, with those of older
generations, who came to them only
after becoming proficient with PCs. Our
job as anthropologists is to understand
the perspective of one tribe, consum-
ers, 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.
High-tech companies have to date
employed the lion’s share of corporate
ethnographers. But I believe that ethnog-
raphy is so beneficial that it will spread
widely, helping firms in every industry
truly understand customers and adapt to
fast-changing markets.
Ken Anderson (ken.anderson@intel.com)
is an anthropologist at Intel Research and
a cofounder of the Ethnographic Praxis in
Industry Conference.
Reprint F0903C
decision making, which informs action,
which creates change, while feedback
makes everything work better. They also
resonate with the stages of the “hero’s
journey” made famous by mythology
scholar Joseph Campbell. The arche-
typal heroes of myth and popular culture
walked more or less the same path as
Jack Welch.
It’s painfully obvious that companies
continually fail to absorb these simple
lessons. The question is, What will it
take for us to internalize the insights won
by our heroes?
Jack Covert (jack@800ceoread.com) and
Todd Sattersten (todd@800ceoread.com)
run 800-CEO-Read, a company that sells
business books. They are the coauthors of
The 100 Best Business Books of All Time
(Portfolio, 2009). Reprint F0903D
1/28/09 6:21:49 PM