9/7/2011: The Importance of Storytelling in Business and Innovation

Sheridan Tatsuno and Suzanne Connolly facilitated an inspiring dialog on converging trends in technology and society that are creating huge opportunities for the art of storytelling. As the evening progressed, diners began to share their own stories.

Topics ranged from the use of storytelling by children to document and expose corrupt government practices to unlocking the increasingly woman driven consumer economy. SVII is looking forward to further collaboration in capturing and creating stories to support innovation advocacy.

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Storytelling is a core competency of innovators and innovation advocates – what better way to transmit insight and provide context? A convergence of trends is now creating tremendous new opportunities for the art of storytelling.

“The Stage” – The entire world is several orders of magnitude more connected connected than only 5 years ago. And, the rapid growth of social networks, mobile devices and cloud computing isn’t slowing down anytime soon. The barriers to doing business internationally, particularly for communications-centric ventures, are drastically lower than ever before.

“The Play” – Stories take on many forms, eg. writing, music, film, drama, fashion or game design.  These are the “Plays” on this new digital “Stage”.

What are the storytelling opportunities for global ventures and digital studios right now? How can small businesses leverage global networks? What are the kinds of stories that businesses should master?

Sheridan Tatsuno is a worldly man fluent in four languages. A longtime Silicon Valley market researcher, business strategist, and visionary thinker, he has touched the lives of many with his involvement with things like the “Intel Inside” campaign and AMD’s sub $1000 PC. He is also a screenwriter with several of his writings on Japan that have been subsequently produced into documentaries. Today, he champions the arts with two Silicon Valley initiatives via Facebook:

Silicon Valley Global Network – focuses on global entrepreneurship and collaboration (the IT and business platforms, or “the stage”).

RENAISSANCE: SF – promotes transmedia storytelling in Silicon Valley (the “plays”).

Suzanne Connolly is the co-founder RENAISSANCE SF. She will also be participating in this dinner program. As a writer, editor, filmmaker, advisor to startups, and political advocate for technology and telecommunications, she has a passion for the convergence of storytelling and the democratization of technology.

We are pleased to have Sheridan Tatsuno and Suzanne Connolly share their vision that the current social media IT platform boom (mostly run by engineers and programmers) will soon lead to an explosion in Web/mobile storytelling (led by liberal arts and humanities grads).  The left brain will finally connect with the right brain! — the only way the U.S. can compete against left-brained China and India that offer much cheaper labor in the hundreds of millions.