I am new to Anthropology

I had the honour of meeting Julien Cayla, a renowned author, professor and ethnographer. I first learned about him through this MIT Sloan Management Review article from 2015 - "Stories can deliver business results". Lucky for me, he is a professor at NTU in Singapore and happens to be quite active on LinkedIn. I tried my luck with Inmail and voila, he offered to meet with me over coffee.

My question to him: considering we are in the business of business, it can be hard to truly understand a customers purpose and intent especially at scale. We usually rely on data to help us see the big picture and use ethnographic research as anecdotes to complement our findings. When ideally, we should deep dive into our customers’ lives first and validate with supporting data. Do you have any recommendation on how to practice this in our daily lives?

His response: What you see on the surface is "talk". Most of us take this talk on face value and build products accordingly. But culture is analogous to an iceberg where the values and needs lie deep underneath the water, for all of us. As a product manager, it is our responsibility to dive in, witness and dig into this iceberg - to truly understand what matters to our valued audiences.

His Background:

- As an anthropologist, he characterised modern anthropology, which emerged in the early 20th century, as the "Eurocentric approach to comprehending diverse cultures." This perspective offers insight into its limited popularity in Asia.

- For his PhD thesis, he partnered with Leo Burnett, Chicago to understand the adaptation challenges that large brands face when they launch in new, challenging markets, focusing on India.

- For his final thesis, he moved to Mumbai and lived near Babulnath for a year (which is where he met his wife)

- Currently, he is also a guest professor at IIM Udaipur

His current projects:

- He is currently working on understanding the impact of social media on the culture of farming in India (particularly Rajasthan).

- He is also in the process of writing 2 books - one of them called "The Ritual Code".

For people interested in ethnography, he recommends the following books by Christian Madsjberg:

- Sensemaking

- Look