REFLECTION – STORYTELLING

CHALLENGE    The challenge is how to make our coffee farmers in Batangas keep on planting the Liberica  species. First coffee tree arrived in the Philippines in 1740. In 1800s, the Philippines became the  4th largest exporter of coffee and when Iron Rust hit Brazil, Philippines is only the source of  coffee in the world. Robusta and Arabica are the most planted coffee in the Philippines. Liberica  only comprises 4% of the production. In my business, I aim to preserve Liberica and to promote  them as Filipino Heritage icon as it was in 1800s. But how do we do that? As an owner of a  coffee manufacturing company, I would like to encourage more farmers to limit grafting Excelsa  and Liberica species. The reason they do grafting is because Liberica produces less amount of  coffee than the other 3 species. Doing so increases their production. Liberica has the strongest  caffeine content and has the strongest aroma. It is the best in terms of taste and caffeine. It has  the highest price too in the market. Unfortunately, there is less and less of it. Market is selling  fake Liberica as what they sell is mostly Liberica-Excelsa (nearest Liberica’s taste.) I would like to  assure the farmers that there is market on Liberica, to preserve this century old species, and to  be proud of our heritage. I am afraid that time will come, no one will plant this anymore. I focus  in Lipa City where the climate is cool and the soil is best for Liberica. There are 254 farmers and  30,000 coffee trees (including Liberica.)     SELECTION    I choose Storytelling Tool for Design Thinking. I work directly with the President of the Coffee  Cooperative and the Manager of a private farm. Both of them have Liberica species which is the  main ingredient of our Coffee Blends. I ascertain that Storytelling is the perfect tool for me to  design my innovative solution to the challenge. In the lecture video about Geoff and George at  Module 2, I saw how important it is to use Storytelling as a tool focusing on a prepared mind. It  means having a learning mindset, broad repertoire, and customer empathy. I would like to  bring the President of the Cooperative and the Manager in a journey of experience wherein I  would like to show them and make them feel the importance of Liberica in our overall coffee  industry in the Philippines. Storytelling is connecting with them, inspiring empathy to the  farmers and their customers, and making sense of all the coffee species currently planted  around us. That means, my “story” in mind is making them accessible to them and then the  farmers. It will show them how acceptable it is to continue planting the Liberica and making  them part of this evolving journey to effect overall positive impact both in the farming side and  business aspect. We humans are hard-wired for storytelling as we love narratives—passing  them on to next generation—becoming part of our culture, beliefs, and personal identities.  Storytelling explores growth of the coffee industry in my City and quashes the fixed/status quo  of the coffee. By having growth in mind, we can produce more innovative coffee products. But  it has to be a two-way between us and the farmers.

APPLICATION    First, I did a basic ethnographic survey of the current challenge (the what is). I found out that  the average age of the farmers is 57 years old, there are 254 farmers in the cooperative, there  are 30,000 trees but not all are bearing cherries anymore, Liberica species has 3 types, and only  two private families have industrial-type planting of Liberica in my City. I also found out that  they sell Liberica lower than usual market price, they also do not know how to pick the  premium beans, and they have no access to direct market to sell the beans. Hence, they opt to  focus more on cheaper beans but that produces more cherries. After getting these data, I  focused on the President of the Cooperative and the Manager. I explained to them the vision  and mission of my company. I showed them visually the history of coffee since 1740. We had  coffee tasting and we showed them the digital transformations and the new ways of serving  coffee (drip coffee, coffee tower, frappes, blended and many more.) We had brainstorming and  further tasting and we explored possibilities of new ways to serve the coffee and hence creating  more markets and unique products for Liberica. Interesting ideas came and this created  community-based interest wherein women workers like to join us and the farmers like to  exclusively give us Liberica provided we will buy them in a higher prices. Higher price means  they will plant more and they have more monies to take care of the coffee plants. This gave rise  to a new concept of our coffee—Dip Coffee. The President and the Manager are now working  directly with us as they see the design of our innovation where we bring Liberica in a new form  instead of just beans. This motivated them to encourage younger ones to join the cause so that  the older farmers can pass on the coffee knowledge to the younger ones. Overall, the  storytelling worked from telling them the story of coffee up to the story of bringing Liberica in a  new form—from coffee beans to the table.     INSIGHT    I learned the insight of listening and age gap. I thought my design thinking was perfect already.  But I saw that the farmers are the real experts. The truth is they are not being heard by local  government authorities hence they are not motivated to plant more the best species. They lack  support from the community and the government. I thought that it was only because of the  money matters, but this is more secondary. The challenge is more of the “lack of support.” So  by showing them that we are here to support and that we will serve as the linker between them  and the local community, then they are more optimistic to carry on. The challenge has become  more emphatic by including their actual needs rather than the needs of the market. I realized  that the need is more of emotional and societal in nature. In another sense, my design thinking  has become more farmer-focused by including them on our impact stories in business. They are  the main criterion of our impact, followed by the number of women and families we help by  hiring them and how we are able to give them decent jobs. In turn, they have means to produce  for their families.

APPROACH    If next time I encounter the same challenge, for example, to the similar commodity—cacao  beans. I will still use storytelling but this time, I will crowdsource experts who also have  knowledge in cacao. This way, aside from challenges, big idea, and how to’s, we would also  include an important part of the design which is call to action element. This call to action will  show that the design is gearing towards a bigger role—design thinking for impact innovation.  When they see or learn about the impact, it will make them more collaborative rather than  individualistic in farming. In turn, this is beneficial for our supply chain because we will have  more raw materials and more sources—producing a free market win-win for everyone.

