RDVP Seminar: Syed Shariq (9/29/2004)

Syed Shariq, co-director of the Kozmetsky Global Collaboratory, spoke with us about the research going on at the collaboratory and the "Real-Time Venture Design Lab (ReVeL)". Their goal is to make social ventures more sustainable, and they do that by helping the founding entrepreneurs create and refine their narratives. They find that the narrative is the way to convey the vision, values, and culture to others beyond the founding team, so that the organization can survive the loss of any person. An alignment of the organization's narrative and goals with the founders' personal narratives leads to a resonance that magnifies the power of the message.

The ReVeL methodology (based on success at JPL design sessions) is to have all the key players co-present for 3-hour sessions, with all of their models also available for visual display, where they hammer through the major issues to reach convergence after 5 or 6 of these sessions. The ReVeL sessions address:

1. Founder
   
2. Team
   
3. Constellation (market, funders, etc)
   

The experts in each session include a narratologist, and a navigator/facilitator. By matching the entrepreneur's narrative to the patterns and archetypes demonstrated in folk tales, the experts help in constructing a better way to "tell the tale", and potentially can bring visualizations to the narrative as well.

We talked a bit about the tie to brands--the ability to recognize the character and integrity of the company; and whether it can be built solely with money (e.g. Coca-cola, dot-coms) vs. those that are consistent with the founders' narrative and vision (e.g., HP, Disney (in the pre-Eisner era)).

We also covered the difference between a social movement and an organization, mentioning groups such as Beyond War, Swahdyay, Mondrian, and Body Shop. Doug McAdam of Stanford was cited as an expert on social movements.