Ethno is a full-stack design studio, from ideation to business implementation.

Our DNA

We were born in 2009 as a Digital Agency, up to date. and we continue to promote that philosophy today.

Our secret sauce is based on bringing the customer’s
voice as the center of the conversation in conjunction
with strategic thinking practices and business innovation methodologies.

Our work is inspired by the construction of virtuous
teams with our clients, to create a relationship that goes beyond that of customer and supplier.

Our Story

Ethno is a South Florida based agency, created as the result of a complex mix of multicultural flavors spiced with great doses of creativity and science.

We try to catalyze urban ethnicities through anthropology, engineering, information technologies and design.

We are here on a service mission that recognizes cultural diversity. That’s the reason why we are name is ETHNO.

Our roots can be traced back to 2009 when our founder, Gabriel Bedoya, resigned from his executive career at a global jeanswear brand to pursue his dream to create an innovation like agency to help entrepreneurs materialize their business ideas.

Ethno officially started on a trip to South Africa, where Gabriel was able to learn about local businesses and culture.

As a business anthropologist, he became interested in South African platforms for communitary entrepreneurship, especially around telecommunications initiatives which were very popular at the time in SA townships and small villas.

That is how Ethno came to sign its first contract in 2009 with Microsoft Research to gather insights for the development of Schools 365. Since then we have been in a permanent co-evolution, moving from design thinking agency to a people-centered organization.

Inspire to Empower

Our mantra and the principal reason for
what we do in the way we do

What we do

Many people ask if wether we are a digital marketing agency, graphic design studio, or market research company.

The truth is that we aren’t any of those businesses. To do work, we use tools common to those disciplines. However, we are more than just a communications agency.

We try to catalyze urban ethnicities through anthropology, engineering, information technologies and design.

We are constantly searching for active insights and trends. We work alongside our clients, consumers in the matter of built memorable experiences around new opportunities, existing business, products, services or even communication strategies.

We call ourselves a people-centered organization because people are our main source of information and inspiration. Insights emanate from them from open conversations.

With more than 14 years of amazing experiences, we have been able to develop proprietary methodologies that allow us to deep dive into what we call PBP Discoveries. PBP stands for the Problem Behind the Problem, and in order to turn clients’ ideas into PBPs, we have developed the Innovation Wheel.

Once executed, these tools and exercises help us visualize potential opportunites, trends, and challenges in the process of creating better options for the future portions of the company.

S-FRAMES

Our experience has shown us that many business initiatives fail because the organization isn’t ready to adopt them. Innovation-based projects look like a double sided highway; in one lane runs the economic development and in the other the organizational culture. The tricky part is that this highway may cross lanes, overlapping one over the other. The reason why some experts say “culture eats strategy for breakfast”. Implementing a culture that rapidly absorbs the “new” is a key factor.

O-POINT

We start by understanding the odds and ends of our client’s business model; this exercise helps us understand how the company creates, distributes, and captures value. It’s a great exercise to get everyone involved and educated about the client value proposition. It also helps us identify weaknesses and those business areas that need to be strengthened.

C-SUITE

Once all these exercises are executed, we encourage the participants to leverage and set a THINK TANK / TNT with all discoveries. All potential project
ideas will then evaluated under
a methodology called Value Factor
Analysis or VFA. Only those projects
with demonstrated potential value will be moved to the next phase. VFA
analysis is a critical methodology to
measure success in future implementations.

C-DIVE

Once we understand the client value proposition, We dig into the business category, starting by asking questions like: How does the value proposition fit into the business category? Who set market rules for that industry? What kind of offers are present on the market? How can we disrupt competitors? And many more questions that help us shape the business category.

PIPELINE

At this stage, we analyze company resources and priorities before we move into the implementation process designed in the TNT phase.
Implementation teams are created with specific goals and deliverables.
To close the exercise, we go back to the business model, in order to set a before and after picture. From this perspective, scenario simulations can be done and potential new future portions become visual for all participants.

T-SCAN

Innovation accelerators bring new challenges to all businesses every day. Disruptors are surfing the wave of their own categories in search of
new opportunities to create market rules and barriers.

New trends breach the path of all industries affecting business models and setting new callences for modern entrepreneurs.

Understand the impact of emerging trends its a must if you want to be in business today.

TNT

Social Sciences were structured during decades to find answers to cultural practices like syncretic thinking or the art of “blending cultures and ideas from mixing concepts from different places.” We design and execute syncretic exercises to inspire our clients to think outside of the box and bring fresh ideas from other categories. Syncretic thinking is a great exercise to generate new market rules, or identify disruptive opportunities.

Timeline

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

2021

2022