Ethnography : an antifragile practice?

Simon Roberts of Stripe Partners continues his three part series on ethnography.

In the first two posts in this series he examined ethnography as practiced in two different contexts – the (1) market research (MR) industry and (2) corporate R&D labs.

He argued that ethnography in ‘MR’ has been devalued as a serious approach to understanding the world through lazy and incurious application. He suggested that ethnography had fared rather better in corporate R&D environments but that challenges exist there too.

This third post makes five initial suggestions for strengthening and developing ethnographic practices in a context of change:
1. Redouble efforts to understand systems and their dynamics: revel in cultural flux
2. Embrace technological tools but don’t forget that the situated observer and analyst remain at the heart of the ethnographic endeavour
3. Show your workings – or don’t hide behind the interpretation
4. Simple doesn’t mean the same as simplistic
5. Ethnography should act as the start point for collaboration