Innovation Blog

By Martha Cotton - Vice President of Research for Herbst LaZar Bell

I’ve been doing this a while—by “this” I mean ethnographic research in a business setting. Throughout my career I’ve experienced many ups and downs in terms of having to justify my existence and stay relevant as an ethnographer to my business colleagues and my clients. But, I would say in the past 2-3 years there has been a noticeable shift in the general acceptance of ethnography as a valid approach to solving business and design problems. In short, ethnography has moved mainstream, which is a very exciting development.