Ethnography as Executive Exposure—Spectacle or Higher Education?

As innovation consultancy specializing in ethnographic methods to generate insights, taking clients to the field has always been part of our projects. But this paper reports and reflects on what may seem like a new development: A rise of projects where the ethnographic experience of clients moves to the center. With these projects, often for higher level executives, the exposure by clients to real people becomes the main selling point, and insight generation only an additional goal. Is the result a spectacle or higher education? A return to capitalizing on the exotic, or a much needed learning experience for high-level decision makers? The paper discusses two recent projects – a workshop for a media company and a study trip for management of a pharmaceutical company - to reflect on the challenges and opportunities of this new species of corporate ethnography where experience production outweighs knowledge production.