Maria Bezaitis
Director, People and Practices Research Group
Over the last ten years, a talented group of researchers, led by Chris Riley, has introduced the value of ethnographic research to Intel. Given the direction that Intel has taken recently, to incorporate ethnographic research into the platform groups, the time is right to extend the value that ethnographic research can provide to the company. Because the People and Practice Research Group is a lab within Intel Research, we will focus first to ensure that long-range research initiatives, a key source of technology innovation, benefit from understanding people, culture, everyday life. That’s what interested me the most about joining Intel: the opportunity to work with an enormously talented team to transform how Intel pursues innovation.
Intel understands that it’s not enough to build and support great technology products. It’s also business critical to ensure that those products are consumer-focused, and that they matter to people’s everyday lives. This is the foremost mission of an ethnographic research group in a company like Intel—to build the connections between people, everyday life and technology.
Intel now has ethnographic research groups in the lines of business, which demonstrates the value the company places on ethnography’s unique contributions. The question now is, how can People and Practice Research continue to have a similar level of impact?
Many companies are using ethnographic research in the way that Intel is now, by applying it directly to the conceptualization of new products and services. The next challenge is to understand how ethnography can be used to provide long-lasting value to technology research and development. That’s one of the exciting challenges we face, and a key reason I was attracted to this position.
Maria Bezaitis became Director of Intel’s People and Practices Research Group in June 2006. Previously she held management positions in marketing and research at Apopleo, Inc., a wireless strategy and network integration firm based in Chicago. Prior to that, she spent four years leading ethnographic research teams at Sapient Corporation, a business consulting and technology services firm. She started her professional career at E-Lab, a firm that pioneered the use of ethnography for product and service development, where she was a managing partner.
Bezaitis earned a B.A. in French Literature from Dartmouth College and a Ph.D. from Duke University, in French Literature and Cultural Studies
