I came across Nancy Duarte shortly after watching the incredible visuals in Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth", visuals that are seared on my mind years after seeing the movie. Nancy's company, Duarte Design helps companies communicate big ideas - they create the presentations and they train the people who create presentations (unfortunately as of yet they do not train the executives who often give those presentations). But the biggest impact that Nancy Duarte has had is that through thorough research she has come up with a new framework to communicate ideas. This framework described in her book, Resonate (get the interactive iPad version), uncovers a pattern that is part of every great speech given - Nehru, Martin Luther King and the great Steve Jobs. This video describes the overall model, that draws from story telling, cinema and Greek theatre and Joseph Campbell.
In implementing this approach for several clients I have found that despite the goal being a presentation deliverable, in fact the process of constructing presentations this way leads you to ask all of the key questions that must be answered to well position and differentiate a company or product. In fact, many of the brainstorming techniques can be extended to help derive corporate strategy, product positioning, competitive positioning etc... This makes the process of creating a killer presentation one that can help you reimagine your overall strategy, reimagine your customers and reimagine your world.
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