Ken Anderson on using ethnographic translation for strategy at Intel
March’s Harvard Business Review has a short article by Intel’s Ken Anderson. Ken has consistently argued the importance of ethnography as ‘translation’ between tribes, in this case corporations and consumers. Here he highlights discovering questions rather than just answers is useful for strategic way-finding as well as short-term innovation.
“Our job as anthropologists is to understand the perspective of one tribe, consumers, and communicate it to another, the people at Intel.”
Ken Anderson
Comments (4)
Dr John Curran on 2009/04/28:
As an anthropologist, I question this assumption of what anthropology does. What Ken Anderson touches on is that an anthropologist’s role is one of a cultural broker. This is not really the case and restricts anthropological creativity. What an anthropologist should be doing is creatively interpret one culture (consumers, users) and translate meaning from their interpretations so that others can understand. This therefore becomes a creative process and leads to insights and innovation. Crucially, it moves away from anthropology being simply an advocate or broker.