Recipe for Business Opportunity: Include the Practitioners -- Ethnography at work for Innovation

Home // Recipe for Business Opportunity: Include the Practitioners — Ethnography at work for Innovation

Recipe for Business Opportunity: Include the Practitioners — Ethnography at work for Innovation

Research companies, like everyone else, are questioning their value. Like everyone else, they are struggling to push beyond the boundaries of their current deliverables. In their case, information is too fluid to rely on one definitive report. At the same time, I imagine that ad agencies might wish they weren’t called ad agencies. It’s like naming your medical practice by the diagnosis. You can’t give away the ending in the title and know you’re doing the right thing for every client. Surgeons cut. Ad agencies make ads. And last but not least, design firms prioritize physiological and aesthetic relevance but they do take the time to understand people and groups. They engage in ethnography to get context and use mapping techniques to spur innovation even if their business model does not allow for completely open-ended non-prescriptive discovery.

There are only one or two innovation firms that I’ve come across in my search for a job home that are really ideal settings for ethnography. One of those is WhatIf; they use experts with long backward trajectories in various categories to solve problems. They also listen with purpose. But WhatIf isn’t hiring.

I was recently asked how I would approach bringing innovation for new product development to a traditional quantitative and qualitative research company with most of their DNA in brand and advertising research. Here are the initial thoughts I offered. Though I didn’t have enough time to develop them further, I thought I’d share them.

‘The Constellation’ I talk about in this blog post calls for a shift in approach

A Shift In Approach #1

Look beyond the super-users and early adopters trend and insights experts tend to seek out. Everyone with an Internet connection is an influencer. The single idea or authoritative voice has been replaced by a constellation of conversations, ideas and stories.

Influence is multilateral. Everyone is pinging around from fact to fact, story to story, idea to idea. Those facts and stories are disembodied most of the time. The antecedent is not always important.

The constellation of input is what we have to look at.

A Shift In Approach #2

We’re living in an age of ongoing experimentation. Reach across disciplines and cultural phenomena for answers. I did this naturally but was really taught to do it working at Crispin. You look to other categories not just for inspiration but for insight into cultural resonance.

Recipe – the Secret Sauce

Traditional Quant

Traditional Qual (as needed)

Ethnography (deeper open-ended cultural exploration) that includes designers and other ‘makers’. Find those with a pertinent process-knowledge base and bring them into your research in addition to the end-user you are trying to learn about (not only as the experts they are but as people to learn from, observe, and explore with.)

Triangulate as needed.

Tools & Tenets

Consider all social, economic and cultural factors that effect business and consumers (locally or globally or both):

Visit innovative hubs in emerging markets to look for fresh ideas

Listen to world’s greatest problem solvers and cross-reference findings with best thinking

Engage in innovation research praxis: trends and best practices + practical concerns of the business at hand + research into behaviour and emotion –> put into test scenarios.

In a Nutshell

Innovation starts with observation.

A diversity of well considered perspectives increases the depth and in turn, the value of the proposition.

It is vital to involve makers (designers, engineers, developers) – those versed in design thinking and iterative process – for richer analysis and problem-solving.

Drawing fresh ideas from related cultural phenomena further shapes thinking and brings ideas to life.

Stuff I Like to Do or Lead

Self-documentation / digital ethnography

Journaling, Videography, Brainstorming

Sketches, mock-ups, scenario building, co-creation

Map the Marketplace, Category, Competition, Trends

Shopalong

Develop an ‘app-along’

Workshops for Clients

Designer / Developer/ Engineer/Creator panels

Guided tours

Also Incorporate

Protyping – 3d ideation or narrative booklets and videos of findings and innovation exploration

So…

Trends

Observational Research

Workshops

To create best products, brands, services, business opportunities.

The End

I think I’m now off to do more What Women Make stuff and combine my anthropology and truth-seeking with Peter Crosby’s human geography landscapes. More later from Barcelona.