About Craig Honick

Craig is an applied ethnographer who studies group culture to address and resolve challenges facing organizations, whether that requires generating deep customer insight or explaining organizational behavior. He’s the founder of The Good People Research Company and The Guiding Narrative® on Substack. He is also an Entrepreneur in Residence at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, as well as an advisor to two emerging technology ventures.

Craig’s professional focus is to help organizations of all types earn credibility, trust and loyalty with their audiences. He does this primarily by aligning the organization’s brand behavior with the inner story customers tell themselves about how the world works and their place in it — what he calls their Guiding Narrative®.

For more than two decades, Craig has led human-centered research initiatives that uncover the deeper values and meaning systems driving consumer and employee behavior. His work blends ethnographic fieldwork, storytelling, and behavioral insight to help brands communicate credibly, connect authentically, and create long-term value.

Now, as AI becomes increasingly embedded in how decisions are made and strategies are shaped, a new challenge emerges: if the data AI models are working with are not aligned with how people actually make meaning of the world, these models will only accelerate our ability to misunderstand the stakeholders organizations are trying to serve. Without a true human-centered lens, we risk scaling this misinterpretation at unprecedented speed.

In response, Craig and his team at The Good People Research Company are developing GNP.AI—an insight platform that interprets behavioral data through the lens of human meaning-making. Built on the Guiding Narrative® framework, GNP.AI helps organizations build brands people can believe in and connect with by ensuring human-centered insight is incorporated into synthetic AI models, while leveraging the power of these models to accelerate and target brand storytelling, product innovation, and brand extension.