Since receiving my Ph.D. in Anthropology from Yale University, I have worked for leading companies such as McKinsey & Company, CJ, Blizzard Entertainment Korea, Google, and Philip Morris Korea for the past 20 years.
I believe that this career was possible not 'despite being a humanities major' but 'because I am a humanities major.'
Anthropologists define themselves as 'marginal men'.
When studying a group, to deeply empathize with its members without losing objectivity, one must firmly maintain the perspective of an outsider and an insider, that is, a bystander.
As someone with a peripheral identity, I've spent the past two decades exploring two seemingly unconnected worlds: anthropology and business, discovering and solidifying a path between them.
This book is both an anthropological record of my journey and a business report.
---From the "Preface"

Once they learn even a little about Korean culture, their attitude changes to, "We understand what Korean users want, so we'll try to reflect that."
It is not a difficult or unusual request, but rather a reasonable request with a socio-cultural context.
Consumers do not exist only as consumers.
Before they are consumers, they are members of numerous communities: their country, region, workplace, family, and taste communities.
Therefore, we should not limit them to users sitting in front of a computer or shoppers checking price tags at a supermarket counter.
Only by trying to understand in a holistic way what they talk about, where, when, with whom, why they laugh and why they get angry, where they focus their attention, and what they think about, can we begin to see their consumption patterns.
---From "PART 1 03 Holistic Approach: Consumers are not numbers, but exist in everyday life"

Big data and thick data can complement each other.
Big data, which is quantitative information, allows us to know 'what and how much,' while thick data, which is qualitative information, allows us to gain insight into 'why and in what context.'
Big data relying on machine learning can pursue accuracy, while thick data relying on human learning can pursue universal truth.
Big data, which identifies patterns by eliminating variables, is advantageous when uncertainty is low, while thick data, which accommodates complexity, is helpful when uncertainty is high.
If big data tells us what happened in the past and what is happening now, thick data tells us what will happen in the future and what we don't know yet.
---From "PART 2 01 Business insights come from thick data, not big data"

Why does it matter 'why' it happened?
If you don't know why you succeeded or failed, you can't carry over past success to the present, nor can you escape past failure.
For example, Blizzard didn't really understand why StarCraft I was such a huge success in Korea.
For this reason, StarCraft II was bound to have disappointing results in Korea.
If Blizzard had accurately analyzed the reasons why Koreans were crazy about StarCraft I, following the three steps mentioned above, they could have obtained smart data that would have led to the success of the next series and made StarCraft II a hit in Korea.
As Blizzard's case clearly shows, the clue to predicting the future always lies in the "why," not the "what."
Only smart data, which proves the insights of thick data with big data, can tell us what is happening and why, and can serve as an accurate standard for predicting the future.
---「PART 2 04.
From "Beyond Thick Data to Smart Data"

The reason consumer research doesn't yield innovative ideas is because consumers don't fully understand their own latent needs.
We are often unaware of the need or discomfort we feel in a particular situation until someone reminds us of it.
When P&G visited consumers' homes and observed how they used their detergents, they found that most consumers dissolved the detergent in water and stirred it with a stick.
However, consumers consistently said they had no complaints about P&G detergents.
Why didn't they say that the detergent didn't dissolve in water and was inconvenient?
It's not that he lied, he just didn't realize he was stirring the water he had mixed detergent in.
Through this participant observation, P&G developed a detergent that was highly soluble in water, and only after discovering this detergent in supermarkets did consumers become aware of their habit of mixing the detergent in water and stirring it.
It was only after a new product that solved the inconvenience was released that consumers themselves began to recognize the inconvenience they had experienced.

---From "PART 3 01 Consumers Don't Tell the Truth"