ABSTRACT

Corporate research labs are on the decline. Economic hard times have caused corporate research headcount reductions and compelled researchers to look for external funding for their research agendas. According to Slywotzky (2009: 5th paragraph), “since the 1990s, labs dedicated to pure research – to the pursuit of scientifi c discovery – have seen funding slowly decline and their mission shift from open-ended problem solving to shortterm commercial targets, from pure discovery to applied research.” These increasing economic pressures are requiring corporate researchers to create and demonstrate a clear impact on corporate processes and offerings. At Xerox, we have found that our ethnographic research makes a bigger impact when we involve stakeholders in the research process.