Wednesday, August 18, 2004

See the world through customers' eyes

Anthropologist Genevieve Bell helps Intel see the world through customers' eyes. She is working with local ethnographers in India, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, China and Korea (a list that her administrative assistant short-handed as I AM SICK). The ethnographers helped her find families in each country who were willing to let her move in with them for a few days to watch how they interacted with each other as well as with the technology in their homes and offices.

She recounts her experiences of working in Malaysia:
"I began to hear the term 'kiasu,' for which there was no English counterpart...

They would use it in talking about the education of their kids, when they were concerned about their kids not being left behind."
This is an indication of the depth of R&D being done by companies like Intel and a sobering thought for us as we aim to tranform Malaysia into a developed country with a knowledge-based economy.