Anthropologists make sense, provide insight and co-create change

Abstract

In this chapter, Rikke Ulk, the woman CEO of the first European anthropological consultancy company, argues that applying anthropology outside academia helps companies and organizations to develop meaningful insights and to co-create change. Combining the anthropological ‘people skills’ with creative, journalistic, visual and film-making skills, Rikke has led hundreds of consultancy projects. Her teams of anthropologists and designers work closely with the client teams and management boards. But most importantly, they work with and among the people of interest, which means always working locally, with a sense of place, meeting and engaging with people in their everyday lives and endeavours during field visits. The ambition of the kind of applied anthropology presented in this chapter is to not only understand people better but to meet and activate them by testing and inventing new and better solutions to problems identified with them in a process of co-creating change.