Integrating Ethnography and Futures Thinking

Learn how to position ethnography as an integral component of strategic foresight.

Tuesday, May 7, 9–10:00 am Pacific Time / 6–7:00 pm CEST
This session is FREE for EPIC Members during Learning & Networking Week

How can ethnographers, who are so deeply embedded in the present, have a role to play in futures thinking and strategic foresight? As consultants at IS IT A BIRD, we’ve come across this skepticism more than once. As we don’t shy away from the challenge sparked by provocation, we’ve started building our position within futures, exploring how to stay true to our core beliefs in what will most likely not change, while embracing the conversations about all that will most definitely change.

In professional collaborations with global, industry leading clients, we have innovated through projects and matured our language around, and positioned ourselves within the space between ethnography and futures.

We’ve learned a lot on the way, and we want to take the chance to share back to the communities some of the practical lessons learned, the methodological tools developed and the challenges faced. Our aim is to facilitate an eye-level conversation, which helps us all to take our shared fascination with futures work one step further, as a community of researchers in the industry.