This is the first semester of the Engineering for Peoples and Markets Program at Fresno State. The program consists of two teams. Each team consists of two or three engineer majors (computer and electrical), an entrepreneurship major, and an anthropology major. The purpose of our team is to work together on the creation, design, and marketability of a piece of technology created by the engineers for their senior projects. It has been interesting discovering each of our roles within this project, and the experience of working with people trained in different fields has been valuable.  There have definitely been some learning hurdles for me, and things I’m still working on. Some things that I initially saw as hurdles, I’m beginning to realize might be more common than I thought.

            Our project is very dependent on the curriculum of the engineer majors because this is their senior project and they must create a working prototype by the end of the school year in order to graduate. I originally saw this as an obstacle that would only exist in a college program like this one. Due to the attachment of the project to their pending graduation, I felt like the engineers were very cautious, sometimes only focusing on simply getting a very basic working apparatus, rather than a prototype that was more representative of our team’s research and design recommendations. Everything seemed to be contingent on “if we end up commercializing it”, rather than “let’s give this a try”. Their apprehensions are certainly understandable!

Now, as I think about the situation in a different light, I’m thinking this may be a lot closer to what I may experience in the future when working in consultation with other people or companies. Time and resources are always a major concern. Rather than seeing this as an obstacle needing to be removed, I see it as a learning challenge on my part on how to create a good communicative environment with the team and try to represent my research and recommendations in ways that will also include possible solutions on how to address time sensitivity and limited resources. I certainly do not have an answer to this, but it is a constant learning experience for me.

I tried researching “inter-disciplinary teams” online to find out examples of how other teams are working together, at other colleges and within business and organizations. The only articles I could find were regarding inter-disciplinary teams working together within the medical field. I’m wondering if there are other resources where I can find articles relating to this, and examples of how similar programs are operating at other universities.

As more anthropologists work in the realm of business, parallels between the design profession and the business anthropologist continue. A recent business week article dated August 29 is about the challenges that designers face has they climb the corporate ranks towards the executive suite.

As the article notes unsurprisingly, designers often don’t have the basic skills in management, leadership or finances that someone in the upper management would be expected to learn at a more traditional business program. The same can said of anthropologists entering the business world, with just as few skills in how to be truly effective within the complex culture and language of the corporate environment..

In the past I’ve had conversations with both anthropology graduate programs, and graduate design programs about just this difficulty. I have to admit, it seems difficult to achieve this well-rounded education without turning it to your program into a three-year course of study.

The question is really what you want people to know at the end of the day. Do you want them to have Interest, Aptitude or Expertise in a particular topic area? For example, generating interest in a particular topic area would seem to be more about just simply giving someone to be exposure to know that it is an area of value to them. For example, many cultural anthropologists are not trained in quantitative research methods, it is valuable to have them at least be interested in what those methods have to offer.

When thinking about aptitude, that’s the ability to actually see and start to incorporate the value of other disciplines into your own core discipline. And of course if you’re training someone for expertise then that means you’re trying to make them competent all by themselves in a particular area.

What the best route for creating a multi-disciplinary person?

Back in the mid or late 80’s, I remember reading articles asking how PC’s could break the age barrier. At the time there was increasing uptake among a certain part of 20 to 25 year olds and then after that segment, purchasing trends fell off like a cliff. Then a few years later, the marketers and industry analysts were thrilled to note that PC’s had cracked the age gap and more 30 to 35 year olds were buying PC’s! This is an example of something a friend and I used to call a Rolling Segmentation.

Ok, so if you don’t get the joke yet, think about it. It’s a few years later….a few years previously, that 30 year old was… 25. There you have it, the big limit of segmentation: it has a very short-term memory, and never accounts for time. If you change your thinking from a simple segmentation to a rolling segmentation, then you can start understanding arcs of behaviors over time. Its pretty simple. The 20 to 25 year olds simply got older and when they turned 30 to 35 were suddenly treated like new beings that just popped up out of a pumpkin patch as fully grown computer buyers.

If you have not encountered the term Segmentation, it’s pretty common in all phases of business, education, government. You reader, are a segment. A segment is simply a way classifying people, places or things into convenient groupings of people or things with (or providing for) similar needs. For more information on segmentation, you can check out the wikipedia entry. I don’t object to segmentations at all. As humans we have a need to classify things into to groupings for easy mental handling. Like other forms of classifications, segmentations let you communicate in a few words long and complex relationships and descriptions. Of course, that implies the segmentation is correct and insightful to start with. That’s a big problem to start with, but if you at least recognize that segments roll forward over time, you can be on the look out for the errors.

Making recommendations to clients about what to do next is an important part of the job of the team the anthropologist is working in. In addition to understanding people, anthropologists need to understand markets. What’s up, what’s down, it’s hard to really take part in ideation if you don’t know what is already in the market.

Retail audits or retail surveys are a great way to quickly learn about market place trends. I have had friends joke that I spend weekends wondering around Best Buy to see if there happens to be a billion dollars lying on the floor.

One thing, certainly not the only thing, to look for is what I like to call Bundle Death. This is what happens when product B is given away as a deal sweetener for product A. Like getting a free monitor with a new PC or a free DVD player with a new TV. It’s important to keep an eye on bundle death because it says in a very clear way that the former products has hit complete commodity status.

But not every kind of bundle is equal to being a death bundle. For example, a BMW dealer that gives away an iPod with every car gets a boost from both brands. Bundling premium products is also not the same as bundle death. For example, Adobe has several software suites that include many of their most popular applications, but none of the individual apps are damaged by the association.

That’s all for this Sunday.

“Project X Challengers” is a series from Digital Manga Publishing that shows the history of the development of different breakthrough products in the distinctive manga style from Japan. Currently, there are three books in the series: “Nissin Cup Noodle”, “7-11 bring the convenience market to Japan” and “Datsun Fairlady Z (Project X 240Z Challengers)”.

You have to get used to the back to front, right to left reading convention but after that they are a wealth of information. Each book introduces you to the major players involved in the development, and focuses on them overcoming obstacles. It includes the usual comic conventions. Characters exclaim problems and new discoveries with the same bold graphic style usually reserved for when the Justice League is announcing the discovery of a new comet about to hit earth.

At the end of each book, they have pictures of the actual people and process, a timeline of the development, examples of technological developments and more. They are about USD$12, and well worth it.