Storytelling

Challenge & Selection

I like to use storytelling a lot in my life, actually is a tool that I think is very useful. I love  to travel a lot and to be fair who doesn’t love to travel. One of the main reasons I love  to travel is to get to know better the culture of that country and their people. But you  may be saying every person that travels loves to know a new culture and yes but I do  it with a different purpose, that is to know the culture and their people in order to make  business with that country.

One of the challenges we face now days is that if you want to make a deal in another  country you have to know how they negotiate, their customs and more. If right now  someone comes to me and tells me I have to go and negotiate with a group of Chinese  people and I don’t know how to do it, that is the exact moment where I’ll be using the  storytelling. I’ll tell that person my experience in negotiating with Chinese people, what  they like, what they don’t, how was that experience for me so that person can have an  idea and a real story of what can happen.

Application

I remember doing this huge project about how to export Costa Rican coffee to  Singapore, I recall not knowing anything about the export laws in Singapore, how they  like their coffee or how they negotiate at that time. I spent 4 month doing that project,  learning what I needed to learned in order to get the result I wanted. When I had my  project finished it was time for me to use the storytelling tool for the M.TECH in Costa Rica.

I start by telling them some challenges that we faced during those 4 months and that  those are some challenges that they might in the way, also I told them how the people  from Singapore drink their coffee, which tastes they don’t like to drink, how much does  a cup of coffee cost, etc. All of this so that they knew what they might face if they  decided to start an export of the national coffee to this country.

Insight & Approach

Well for me doing that project and at the end going to that Institute to tell my story about  how we got all the results that we showed and all of the challenges that and export to  Singapore faces was really amazing to be honest. I never thought that I was going to  be telling to a National Institute my experience and my point of view on a new deal of  Costa Rican coffee export. I know that my project and telling my story helped this  Institute because they are analyzing the possibilities of starting a deal to export coffee  to Singapore by taking in consideration all of the information that I was able to provide  in the project and during the time that I got to share my story and point of view.

What I have learned is that if at the time I was doing my project I had known someone  that already faced all of the challenges I was facing, it would have been so enriching  for me because I would have seen a different point of view besides from mine and for  that is one of the main reasons of storytelling, seeing the things from a different  perspective and learning from the experiences of other people.

