Ethnography, Storytelling, and the Cartography of Knowledge in a Global Organization: How a minor change in research design influenced the way our team sees, and is seen by our company

Abstract

Our team unites qualitative researchers, designers, and prototyping engineers to investigate workplace technologies using a four‐step process: ethnography, analysis, intervention, measurement. Projects develop in relation to the needs of internal corporate units identified as project stakeholders. An experiment with a more ethnography‐centered research approach, conducted without a specific internal sponsor, led us to develop findings we believed could benefit many groups in our organization—designers, product teams, salespeople, corporate strategists—but presented us with some unfamiliar challenges. First, we needed new storytelling and social media tools to disseminate our message. Second, we needed a way to find out who, in our organization of 75,000 globally distributed employees, might value our findings. In response, we initiated an internal project investigating and mapping out social networks of knowledge exchange and strategic influence in our company. We foresee using this strategy map to guide future efforts to share our findings to a more diverse audience in our company.