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Abstract

This paper examines what happens when an applied qualitative researcher becomes embedded in a cross-border entrepreneurial venture: not as an outside observer, but as a co-producer whose expertise shapes the venture's design and commercial viability. The case concerns the alignment of three quite different collaborators who pitch a corporate social responsibility (CSR) project to a Kazakhstani bank: a Tashkent-based digital marketing agency, an Astana-based strategic business consultant, and a qualitative researcher (the author of the paper) whose (applied) research experience in Central Asia grounds the project's cultural sensitivity and evidence infrastructure.

Drawing on organizational autoethnography, the paper traces how this triangle of collaborators designs a "digital cultural heritage platform" for a Kazakhstani bank: an open-access online catalogue of Kazakhstani ornaments and traditional music available for unrestricted use. While this project can favorably position the bank as a "guardian of national heritage", it also raises contested questions about the provenance, authenticity, and presentation of cultural material artifacts and symbolic repertoires. Credible and careful academic involvement has proven essential for this project in two ways: 1) a feasibility study that involves art historians and other cultural specialists to safeguard against unreflected cultural appropriation; 2) a mixed-methods impact assessment that measures the project's societal effect and supports the bank in cultivating a "data-driven culture" to inform its future decision-making.

Situated at the nexus of Public Anthropology and business consultancy, I argue that this is a case illustrating the "positive dual use of knowledge". The insider-researcher who intimately participates in acts of creation, communication, and compromise across a constellation of diverse project stakeholders can utilize the collected evidence both to generate academic scholarship and to translate research findings into outputs of practical significance for non-academic counterparts. In that way, the case reflects on the potentials and pitfalls of how applied qualitative researchers can contribute to a university's "third mission" of societal engagement next to research and teaching.