Here Without You

Continuing from yesterday's theme of storytelling and hitting the "WOW" moment, here's a slightly older clip that I've always enjoyed a lot.



The notion of storytelling is something that almost all of my courses here have emphasized, in one way or another. In Information Management, storytelling was presented as a way of managing and transmitting knowledge within an organization. In Accounting, we're encouraged to look beyond simple ratios and piece together the entire story of a company's performance from the various bits of financial data available. Marketing is all about the customer engagement story, and even Quantitative Methods... ok, I'd really be stretching it on that one. Still, it's a concept that has taken me a while to see, especially in terms of combining the discrete disciplines that we're being taught to get a better idea of the larger "story".

Storytelling is also something I picked up on Wednesday from Richard Sells, the Chief Innovation Officer of Electrolux who presented the story of the rise and challenges of Electrolux, where its been and where it is going. He was talking to us in the context of a customer insight project we're doing for Marketing, and one of the key points he emphasized to us during the presentation was the need to connect with our audience. In this case, the audience consisted of people who'd be affected by the move to a national "Smart Grid". We needed to look at both macro trends, as well as observing and talking to our audience to get a sense of what they needed, what they're priorities were. In reflecting on our group's presentation, I feel we could have done a better job of building the framework of a story within which to present our 'insights.' Granted, it was only a 3 minute presentation, but we should be able to improve for the future.