I went to school to learn the rules of the game called anthropology, only to find myself challenging most of them.  I left grad school pretty clear that the career of an anthropologist was dictated by finding an institutional home - sounds funny if you put it like that -, write proposals for funding research, do the work, write it up, and if the institutional setting requires it, teach. The steps and path were simple, I just chose differently and now am left to wonder can my work be considered a work of anthropology if I do not have the institutional blessing of a foundation or a university? For now, I have settled for doing the work and working towards my goal and then letting a jury of my peers decide the value of what I have discovered along the way. 

If you ask around, however, some people might say I am a business woman, a technology consultant, a business consultant, innovation industry advocate or economic development junkie.  Though not untrue, these quick alternate descriptions miss out on the fact that I am really a participant observer.  I am an anthropologist currently working on how to re-engineneer the landscape in order to facilitate a transformation of the local economy into one where innovation and technology development are a thriving sector of business.

I am continuously collecting data as if on a grand magnanimous institutional grant. Collecting data and then sitting down on a regular basis I sit down and analyze it, reach conclusions and design projects to test my hypothesese working to add to the understanding of the human animal, the dynamics of society and the institutions we construct.  Call it a debt to be repaid or a personal sense of social responsibility, instead of an institutional mandate, this research obeys a personal social commitment to get involved and assist the best I can the economy and society I call home. 

My methodology has focused on being a participant observer and gathering life and business stories. This sounds very traditional except that when an anthropologist decided to go native it is more common to imagine a fellow anthroplogist living and learning how to act in a small tribal community than mortgaging his or her house, seeking investment capital and indebting their future to launch a technology company. But, how else does one go native  when the project is studying the transformation of a regional economy to one of innovation? I propose that if you want to gain insight into the problems faced by technology entrepreneurs in a depressed regional economy the participant observer path would require that you participate and insert yourself in the chain of social interactions you will be studying.  The position of insertion in this scenario could have been at any point as a government economic development employee or as an entrepreneur.

One of the university courses to impact me the most was discussed "studying up." Breaking away with the tradition of studying the disempowered, marginalized communities some anthropologists were taking the challenge of  documenting the culture of power.  Instead of going native among communities where researches as foreigners are afforded a superior authoritative edge, the anthropologist wrote about places where access was more restrictive such as wealthy circles, the scientific community, government, and boardrooms were among the unlikely contexts. The key is how to gain access to the experience and relations that are often hidden from public view.

By virtue or sacrifice, being an entrepreneur that works avidly with fellow business leaders and government officials to engineer the re-inivention of our economy, I have earned access to processes that are not your average ethnography of this area.  Many doors still remain locked to me, but hopefully the knowledge gained will assist others interested in entrepreneurial cultures, economic development policies, and working towards socio-economic change in their own regional contexts.

Does it matter where my reasearch takes place? This question goes to one of the problems of studying up. To the disempowered masses the anthropologists affords the veil of anonymity.  To those with "power," human subjects being studied up anonimity has not been an ethical guarantee.  "People of influence and power should answer to the people" is a righteous claim against affording anonimity. But being part of the struggle for change, I see many people whose lives could be adversely affected by a slanted or partisan reading of my observations turning the reading of this book into a salacious tell all book and this is not my intent.  In this research to the extent possible I will endeavor to provide anonimity - either by changing of names, slight changing of context and dates. Of course, focusing on where I am from geographically speaking, like in any small circle, all it takes is light sleuthing and identities could be figured out.

By publishing my work in progress in a blog format I hope I will discover just how localized the experience I have studied is. Blogging is not a substitution to publishing, it is a new pre-publication dimension of research. During the time I present my work in blog format I will provide greater anonimity to my human subjects and find out through comments and discussion with visitors how relevant location is to the research.  So many places are on the same journey. I travel regularly to the midwest and I see a similar economies trying to do the same, usher in a new economy based on innovation and technology.  It seems that almost everywhere  the large manufacturing plants that were the underpinnings of a local economy have closed, moved away or merged away. A new economic foundation based on knowledge and innovation is being sought in more places than where I call "back home."