Reflection – Storytelling

Link between research and commercial

products/services

Challenge

The main problem that I face in the research institution I work for as a Business Development  Manager is the lack of understanding of potential outcomes of research projects which can be  used to develop new products. Many of my team members have an academic background,  i.e. working as PhD or Post-docs with less industry experience. Therefore, their first priority is  to work on research projects and focus more on theoretical concepts rather than practical  concepts. However, in my case, I am responsible to derive potential products/services from  those research projects which is indeed a very difficult task and requires great imagination  power.     Selection  Based on the challenges described above, I chose the tool “Storytelling” since it will allow  me to create a story on particular outcome of research projects by putting them more into the  context of customer needs of industry clients (referring to lecture 4 of week 2, “Storytelling  tool” by Lorenzo Rosales). This would help to make my team members better understand the real  value behind the products/services which can help industry clients to reduce certain pain  points with less efforts.

Application  I applied the “Storytelling” tool in the following scenario:    Some of my colleagues work in the area of semantic data integration of big data. In the scope  of one specific research project the task was to create a semantic hybrid federated search  engine which would make it possible for the police to detect and trace potential criminals.     A short explanation on how the search engine works:  Following the input of a keyword, the search engine collects on demand data spread over  different data sources on the Web (social networks, e-commerce platforms, Open Data). The  data is integrated into a coherent knowledge graph, results can be filtered, visualized and  display summaries. Currently, it is possible to search for people, organizations, and products.     This research project is still going on and lot of modification and adjustment are made to the  search engine. In order to create a commercial product out of this research project I spend  some time in analyzing the potential of this search engine and tried to find an appropriate way  to “sell” it as a unique product to the sales team by packaging it into a nice and user-friendly  story. I brainstormed on potential application areas of this product in order to move away from

the already known use case, i.e. the criminal analysis. In this way, I would open up new  opportunities/ideas for the development team.     New application area: Why not use this search engine in the HR department of companies.  HR officers spend much time gathering information about the skills and qualification of a  candidate for a job (e.g. by searching on different platforms like LinkedIn). This problem can  be solved if those platforms are integrated to the search engine, allowing to search on just  ONE platform by browsing through many others.     I organized a workshop in which I invited the sales and development team and presented this  new application area by taking the role of a struggling HR manager searching for the right  people for his company and finally, getting to know about the semantic hybrid search engine  which allowed me to search on one platform and saved me a lot of time. I started with the  challenge or problem faced by HR managers, followed by a concrete use case, i.e. HR  manager is struggling and investing lot of time in searching for a suitable candidate for the  post of a Chief Innovation Officer. In the next step, the HR Manager discovers the great  semantic hybrid search engine enabling him to search on one platform and finding a good  match for the position. I concluded by highlighting the benefits of this product not only in the  crime domain but also in other domains like Human Resource Management.

Insight  I gained tremendous insights from applying the tool I selected for the challenge. Using this  approach, almost everyone in the workshop had a better understanding of the ideas and  participated with more interest on this particular use case. The development team  brainstormed on further enhancements with other platforms, i.e. LinkedIn. And, the sales team  took the role of the struggling HR Manager by elaborating on his/her pain in more depth. In  this way, the development team could easily respond to each of those pains by brainstorming  on technical adjustments/enhancement of the search engine. In conclusion, the development  team could focus on the technical modifications to create real value for potential customers  whereas the sales team successfully worked on a pitch for different customer groups.

Approach

Using the “storytelling” tool has been a great start. However, the next time I would organize a  follow-up workshop using the tool “mind mapping”. I would create one group consisting of  developers and the other one with the sales team. Both teams can use the stories and enrich  them with further insights by creating mind maps. They might explore more application areas  and opportunities for this product to reach a certain level of maturity. These maps can be  shared among the two different groups and also with others in our department to analyse the  different point of views and the further alignment to the departmental vision and goals.

Written by

Mrs. Raxa Kumari

Business Development & Project Manager for IoT

Germany

27.01.2017

