Research
A research is a puzzle with blanks and missing pieces. My job is to build the puzzle anyway, feel the blanks and find the missing pieces.
The puzzle can be a problem that needs to be analyzed, split into pieces and rebuilt. The research is the way to bring the solution.
I have made seven years researches about one building technology known 800 BC and brought to the XXth century through oral transmission. The research was ment to understand how.
Research & Investigation
A different eye and a different perception can change the scope of a study.
I have my own methods.
Ethnography
Ethnography will study the habits of the people to bring some solution to any kind of problem. The people can be homeless, workers, inhabitants of a town area, the customers in a shop, people who have habits in a particular condition of life.
Ethnography will study the displacements, the way people move, stay, occupy the space. The way they interact with the other people of the same kind, and the people of different kinds.
Sociology
The focus of the sociology is very similar to that of ethnography, but the methodology and the data are slightly different. Sociology studies the society, and the rules to compile the data only follow two scopes, qualitative or quantitative, what mean that we must be able to compile a large amount of data.
We use the sociology to study groups who will have to answer the same questions. Then we analyze the questions and draw a "sociology" of the group.
Investigation
You make a research when you know what you search, but sometimes, you don't have the beginning of any matter of evidence. You have the feeling that something is going wrong, but you don't know how and why this feeling. An investigation will use ethnographical techniques to collect data and biography to start pushing the go. When the beginning of an evidence comes to appear, then detectives can go farther following the thread.
Innovation
State of the art, markets, needs, partners, manufacturers, factories, costs, time and schedules, innovation requires more than an idea to be able to work.
I can define what an innovation would be accordingly to the state of the art, the markets and the sociology of the people. I can also map a schedule with all the problems that the innovation might find on its way. I can also value the costs of a patent and administrate the communication.
Sample studies:
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Research
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Ethnographical research
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Sociological study
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State of the art
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Financial field investigation
Sample forms:
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Estimate a research
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Estimate an ethnographical study
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Estimate a sociological study
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Estimate an innovation
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Estimate an Investigation
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A research is mainly a compilation of data, their classification, their analysis accordingly to different scopes and the information we can reach with the research.
The data can be books, administrative files, financial files, field collection. The purpose of the research can be an audit, the documentation for a book, a film or an article.
Some researches involve time, sometimes years. Other researches will only take few days.
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Before I make an estimate, I recommend that you write down your ideas and send it to me. After a first understanding of your project, we will schedule an appointment and lastly, I will make an offer that schedules the time, the costs, and the planning.
If I must work inside your company, your factory or visit different places, you must provide all the information before I make an offer. If you don't know rather or not to plan travel expenses, you can use the form here.
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It can involve working with actors to create an unusual situation and see how it works.
Ethnography is documented with pictures, graphs, drawings, sketches, maps, plans, videos and all medias that visually may prove the recurrence of a situation.
The analyses will compile the data and define the rules that the people seem to use. The langage is a rule, the expressions, the moves.
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Ethnographical studies are particularly useful for urban planning, lead the people in one way or another, increase the sales, change the architecture of a building, change the lights, colors, facilities, smells, sensations.
We analyze the habits in order to bring the modifications that may work to keep the habits alive, or change them temporarily or definitively. Ethnography will be useful to improve the costs of any change.
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As an example, I have worked on an IDP camp after the tsunami of December 2004. The sociological study was meant to know how many men, women, children, ages, former village, work, intensions, projects, school, wage, ability to enter an NGO program.
When studying large amounts of data, we can identify the norms of a society, and any rule outside the norms. We can use the rules and the norms to sell new products, develop some kind of innovation, focus a recurrent problem
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and propose new or existing solutions.
Before any survey, we formulate the collection what means that one answer might not ask a direct question. An example with the IDP camp, all women wanted to sell cloth and cook, what would not have been possible in a usual normal society. To bring a group from one situation to an other, we might be prepared to ask the questions that the people may not have answered, for example, plan a different way to make money with different kind of jobs.
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I already have 5 patents and eight years development of my innovations from scratch to the market. I have built prototypes, paid engineering, developped marketing tools. I have won and failed and I have learnt from both.
I know what "optimism" means when we have an invention, the good and the bad. Something I have learnt in Las Vegas is "Knowing when to stop". Invention is a kind of gamble that can make you win or lose, and sometimes lose
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badly. We usually don't know when to stop because the chronology of an invention makes hope so much high to sell the first products that lastly, when we don't reach the profitability, it's even more difficult to stop when the people would buy, when the idea seems good, but when the market makes it almost dangerous. Business competition can sometimes be dreadful.
I have learnt to count my money and no more invest as blind. And that's how I can help.
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One example, an ONG was paying for wood construction, but the contracting ONG was spending money on concrete. I did not collect evidence, but the police did when we found out how.
An other example, an anchor was writing an article an a book about the money used to rebuild after the tsunami. I investigated the records of the UN and I compared with the real
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programs on the field. An investigation usually means to witness something and bring the beginning of an understanding so other people can start to investigate farther following the thread we provide.
I usually work alone and don't provide any graphic or any material forbidden by the laws. I just assist finding the beginning of a full large investigation.