Katherine Burr, CEO of The Hanseatic Group, has masters in both anthropology and business from the University of New Mexico. The world is so unknown, changes so rapidly. Preconceptions can kill you. Companies are starving to know how people use the Internet or why some pickups, even though they are more powerful, are perceived by consumers as less powerful, says Ken Erickson, of the Center for Ethnographic Research. It takes trained observation, Erickson says.
Observation is what anthropologists are trained to do.