Where We Are Now

Industry demonstrates an increasing valuation of the contributions of industrial ethnography. Madsbjerg made that point in his keynote (2014), as did Hal Phillips at the beginning of his recent post on the EPIC website (Phillips 2015). But Phillips also notes that existing ethnography often is constrained to preexisting structures, organizations, projects, and processes. Madsbjerg’s keynote celebrated that “it is now completely reasonable and desirable to do our kind of work,” but likewise critiqued the status quo, saying that we should be “taking on new arenas, the big questions, and higher expectations” (2014). We can respond to this challenge by pushing ethnographic expertise, research, and analysis even further forward and upward in the innovation or business development process, to blaze new trails and drive new opportunities.

There’s nothing new about the idea that understanding human context, systems, and behavior ahead of time provides strategic advantage—it’s what underlies the whole general concept of “applied anthropology,” in all its manifestations, throughout the past 110 years (Rylko-Bauer, Singer, and Van Willigen 2006). But ethnography can exercise more agency in business projects by identifying opportunities, developing collaborative organizational structure and communication, and strategically shaping the design process in sync with dynamic contexts. We do some of this already, embedded within some companies and contracted by others. But continued practical and creative success depends on more than advisory ethnographic insight, so there are two parts to my thinking. First, and a direct extension of existing practice: ethnographic expertise is vital to determining strategy and project direction, especially in increasingly complex contexts. And second: ethnography is a key to building and maintaining collaboration, a means by which to enable both greater efficiency, innovation, and success in business and also recursive growth of ethnographic agency in industry.

A discussion of recent scholarship both from EPIC and on collaborative business philosophy shows how and why industrial ethnography is primed to take steps toward practical application of these concepts. Ultimately, the key to creating efficient and sustainable organizations working on novel, far-reaching, multidisciplinary opportunities in the complex and fluid contemporary market is the same as the key to catalyzing real, sustainable collaboration. To do either, we must understand contemporary and future sociocultural dynamics of complex systems, the facts, forces, motivations, and values of participants in those systems, and how to use that information toward practical and effective communication that can bridge cultural barriers.

The Tautology of Success

Business orthodoxy, whether at startup or multinational scale, can be boiled down to five principles: maximize profit, minimize expense and loss, command and expand the industry, grow as continuously but efficiently as possible, and beat the market (Porter 1979). Michael Porter codified these foundations of strategy based on ongoing study of the dynamics and forces at work in the competitive marketplace (Ovans 2015). Twice he has reiterated that the system of forces and fundamental strategies he described in 1979 remains largely unchanged, if now operating somewhat more rapidly (Porter 1996; Porter 2008).

Formalized business education has existed in some form since the founding of the Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Paris (ESCP Europe) in 1819. Most modern business and management theory is based on Porter’s work, augmented by developments in fields like organizational psychology and behavioral economics and tailored to the contexts of specific national markets and industries. Contemporary business training programs, whether towards an MBA or a targeted certification, provide instruction in a combination of theory and best practices. Because success begets success (Gladwell 2008; McNamee and Miller, Jr. 2004), and because business-school pedagogy is based on case studies of both success and failure, “best practices” basically codifies of how those who have been most successful in industry—C-level executives, serial entrepreneurs, investors—think is best to run a business (Beinhocker 2006). The resulting praxis is not entirely monolithic, but certainly it is clustered tightly around the preferred modus operandi of industry leaders, who attained their prominence by such means in the first place.

Critiques of business strategy and methods provide one window into current potential for change and how to pursue it. But beyond that, however, the rise, propagation, and acceleration of technology, especially digital telecommunications, has profoundly disrupted and reformed the business ecosystem, making it much more complex and dynamic and creating new opportunities for change (Anderson, Salvador, and Barnett 2013).

A Critique of Tunnel Vision

“Marketing Myopia” (Levitt, 2004 [1960]) is a significant and enduring critique of contemporary business philosophy, one to which ethnographic leadership and collaboration can offer both a strategic and an operational response. The critique calls attention to overly intense focus and hyperspecialization, both within and between organizations, as detrimental to creating sustainably successful businesses. The faster, more complex, globalized contemporary marketplace has magnified these trends, making the critique all the more relevant (Heskett 2014; Bazerman 2014). Within the business community, a major response trend has been the explosive popularity of Lean and Agile project management. The close coordination of specialists and rapid iterations prescribed by these methods increase team efficiency and agility, democratize group operations, and increase individual agency (Holbeche 2015). But cultural and communication gaps remain both between disciplines and among larger teams.

“Corporate ethnography” already works to bridge and translate among the different cultures present within an organization in order to reduce barriers to collaboration and efficiency (Off with the Pith Helmets 2004; Cefkin 2010; Fischer 2009; Altimare and Humphrey 2007). And existing industrial ethnography helps hyper-focused organizations be more strategically aware of and responsive to dynamic contexts. But we can do more. We can foster creation of systems of shared values beyond the goal or mission statement of a company or group as a whole, enabling reciprocal value sharing among team members in different roles and creating mutual supportive dependencies to undergird efficient and coordinated parallel operations (Heffernan 2014).

How Can We Do Better?

Margaret Heffernan (2014) critiques our general definition that “success” means “winning,” as well as the fact that what constitutes success is defined in part by those who previously have “won.” She proposes that collaboration is a solution both to strategic or managerial myopia and also to the absence of shared value development and communication. Echoing Levitt, she argues that “focus[ing] single-mindedly on the score” (Heffernan 2014:144) pursues short-term, shortsighted gain to the detriment of cooperation, resilience, innovation, and sustainability. Her cases illustrate that this principle applies both inside and outside of organizations, from relationships among individuals to marketplace interactions of entire organizations. Among people, competition disincentivizes sharing ideas, teaming up, and adding value outside of the job specification. Within organizations, competition discourages employees and managers from considering the broader welfare of the project because “it’s out of scope,” and it also pits projects against each other in the fight for resources. And among businesses, short-term hypercompetitiveness encourages decisions that decrease innovation and longer-term sustainability of a dynamic, competitive marketplace (Anthony 2014).

The reality of the global capitalist economic system requires competition within the market, but the critique of hypercompetitiveness is growing stronger (Meyer and Kirby 2012; Anderson et al. 2007; Graziano, Hair, and Finch 1997). In response, some research is exploring hybrid practices and strategies—for example, “coopetition” among companies in the same industry (Ritala, Golnam, and Wegmann 2014; Basole, Park, and Barnett 2014)—as a way to provide both dynamic competition and stability to the wider economy. Current structures of rewards and incentives encourage immediate market gratification and maximizing quarterly returns, but recent market shocks and recessions have highlighted the importance of more nuanced strategy with a longer horizon. Industrial ethnography has both of these capabilities, developed over the past few years in presentations at EPIC. In combination with the additional ability of ethnographic expertise to lead and facilitate collaboration, thereby maximizing foresight, flexibility, and resilience, this extension of industrial ethnography hints at the possibility for greater changes.