Translating ethnography for internal audiences

Posted 02/05/2008 by jaimes

I found an old interview with Ken Anderson, (then) Manager of People and Practice Research at Intel, where he talks about the role ethnographers play in Intel’s organisational culture.

He talks about the role of ethnographers to bring the outside in to corporations, and how having fieldworkers on staff helps this process because they understand the culture of the organisation as well as the research.

“Our job is as much about understanding translation as understanding people. If you’re on the outside and you do a really excellent study but present the results in a way that doesn’t match the company’s culture, it’s not going anywhere. A lot of innovation dies because people can’t articulate it in a way that makes sense.”

This is a common problem. Keeping insights alive through the life of a project is often as much about having fieldworkers on hand as about crafting the insights in the first place.

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