Challenge and Selection

The tool that aided me the most and gave me a jumpstart was  storytelling, to achieve an understanding where people are  more empathizing.

I’m an entrepreneur and my areas of interests are in new  technologies and innovation. A part of this is the reason I work  towards creating meaningful technological solutions that  empower people from all sorts of walks. I work with  shareholders, researchers, employees and people in context to  come up with a viable solution for energy requirements. Our  strategy is coming up with disruptive innovations.

Recently our work started coming up with new and advanced  solar technologies and we had to convince our whole team to  move to research and develop new innovations in the solar  area. I had to come up with stories as to why this had to  happen and how it would impact our company as well as  people around the world.

I believed story telling would make my team help to put  themselves into the shoes of the people who lack the basic  amenities of energy. This would help them to create solutions  that would improve their situation. By the use of the  storytelling tool I’m able to connect with people concerned in a  better way. Feedback and criticism is always welcomed. I use  this information to develop different strategies to try and find a

way that works for people to gain more independence in the  energy areas.

Application

I start the process by discussing the current methodologies we  use and briefly explain the pros and cons. Then I come up with  a story where it better fits the context. During a meeting where  the topic was considering in investing and developing  technologies other than the mainstream silicon panels in solar  energy, I narrated the scenario of poor women in the rural  areas of India and how they had to toil and crumble for power.

Soon, we were able to find a common ground and agreed to  focus and brainstorm in creating solutions that would help the  poorer sections of society where they could afford to use the  technologies. This helped in easily narrating the issues of cost,  area required and complexity in silicon solar tech with respect  to the rural people.

Insight & Approach

This turned out to help us out more than what I had imagined.  The storytelling tool was powerful and it motivated my team to  work on disruptive technologies which was our team’s primary  intention. We all had a collective goal and this greatly increased  our work ethic as a unit.

Since we could understand who our target customers were and  what they actually needed. This helped us in creating a huge  breakthrough. This tool helped all of us better; gradually we  could come up with more compelling stories to attract future  customers and investors. I no longer had to worry about the  different mindsets in my team. We were able to achieve growth  much faster than what was initially planned out. This course  made me see this as a tool in a new way. Now I can prepare  ahead and think of stories that will assist me in presenting my  ideas and best illuminate them.

