Business Storytelling

Ted presentation by Don Tapscott:

        In todays world of the ever-growing technology openness is needed to adapt for the future.  Three meanings of openness are collaboration, transparency, and sharing. In Dons speech he had a story for every point he made. The first was part of the introduction on how he use to work with children. He spoke about how we are the first generation to grow up in the digital age and how these things seem natural for us to use rather than the older generations having to learn new technology.

        His first point of openness, which is collaboration, he told a story about a banker turned gold minor who couldn’t find gold. The banker was open to new collaboration provided by the internet which turned a failing operation into a billion dollar profit. The second point is transparency, which is the communication of information. He used a metaphor to display his point in the form of a story. He related that a business is naked on the internet so if your going to be naked you must look good. The metaphor is to relate looking good to having good quality and integrity to your company. The third point of openness is sharing. IBM gave millions of dollars to Linux software, which then later provided billions of dollars back to IBM.

         His points all come together at the end to show how the use of leadership individually will benefit for the collective of the global Internet.  He spoke about the record companies suing children instead of being open and embracing the change of technology. We started in the agrarian age to the industrial age now currently at the network intelligence age. People are learning to be open and allowing it to empower them to use the tools of business which was all brought to you through business storytelling. His ability to tell a story to get the people in the audience to understand the point he was making was fantastic and brought the presentation to life.