Case Studies

AUTODESK wanted to tell its story to the world in book format by presenting a collection of reported stories of more than 25 of its customers. To design and write this book, Autodesk turned to a collaborative group that included Ground Level Research. Ground Level Research conducted intensive interviews with customers of the design software maker and wrote book chapters about these customers so as to profile and present the state of the art in cutting edge design. GLR traveled on assignment to report on a range of Autodesk customers and write about how these innovative firms lead design in new directions. Titled Imagine Design Create, the book showcases stories like the ecological redesign of the Empire State Building and the twenty-first century cathedral planned and executed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in Oakland, California. The heavily reported book also took readers behind the scenes into the development of a major video game title by digital publisher Ubisoft and into the creation of Boeing’s Dreamliner aircraft.

ZAPPOS is well-known for its unique corporate culture. In the decade since it was started in 1999, Zappos expanded rapidly from its founding in San Francisco to a sprawling corporation with an in-house call center based in Las Vegas. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh hired Ground Level Research to audit the corporate culture and report back. Ground Level Research conducted dozens of interviews with a range of employees–from the CTO to call center staff–listened in on customer order calls, roamed the hallways, and ate at the company cafeteria. CEO Hsieh was interested in ascertaining whether the corporate culture he saw was actually present in the far reaching parts of the company. At the conclusion of its engagement, GLR supplied a nuanced report that allowed Hsieh and his management team to better view the corporate culture in action.

UNIBANCO is one of the largest banks in Brazil. After purchasing a fast-growing credit card group called Hipercard, executives at this new division hired Ground Level Research to help strengthen understanding of employee culture. Credit card sales chiefly occur at in-store kiosks and executives wanted to better understand frontline employees already working at these kiosks so as to better know whom to hire as the chain of stores (and credit card sales) expanded. Hipercard executives turned to Ground Level Research to study the DNA of current Hipercard frontline culture so as to expand it through better hiring and culture building. Ground Level Research took executives into the field to meet with and interview current kiosk employees, conducted workshops with executives to examine what aspects of other corporate cultures Hipercard might want to emulate and adapt. Alex Frankel also addressed an audience of 200 employees at Unibanco corporate headquarters to share with them learnings about frontline corporate culture from his book Punching In.