By the early 2000s, Apple had already become one of the most influential technology companies in the world.
The products worked well and every launch generated a level of anticipation unusual for a tech company.
The key was the way Steve Jobs prepared the presentations.
The keynotes could be rehearsed for weeks. He constantly reviewed the order of the ideas, changed phrases, removed slides and simplified messages until only what genuinely helped people understand the product’s value remained.
Over time, that way of working became a very important part of the company’s culture.
When Apple introduced the iPod, they didn’t devote the presentation to storage capacity or technical specifications.
The line was:
“1,000 songs in your pocket.”
And when Steve Jobs introduced the MacBook Air, he didn’t start by explaining technical features.
He pulled the computer out of a paper envelope.
Those presentations stood out not only for the design or the staging; they stood out because they got people to understand the value of an idea in a few seconds.
Apple understood that an idea or a product can be technically excellent and still lose force if no one manages to communicate it clearly.
If you look at it calmly, this still happens today inside many organizations.
There are valuable projects and perfectly prepared professionals who nonetheless run into real difficulty when they have to present an idea or get others to quickly grasp the value of what they’re trying to convey.
And that ends up mattering far more than it seems.
Because projects often stall precisely because ideas fail to move forward within the organization.
That’s why skills related to storytelling, synthesis and communication are starting to carry more and more weight inside companies.
Not as something decorative.
But as a capability needed to convey vision, generate alignment and get ideas to be better understood within teams.
And today there’s also a new element that is changing this way of working quite a bit.
Artificial intelligence.
AI makes it possible to speed up the content-preparation process enormously.
In a way, it lets you work on messages and presentations with a level of synthesis and clarity that used to require far more time.
But there’s still an important difference between generating content and building a message that truly connects with people.
The ability to decide which idea should stay, how to structure it and how to turn it into something memorable still makes the difference.
This week we’re launching the workshop: Presentations that make an impact — Storytelling and artificial intelligence in action.
We’ll work on how to structure messages, synthesize complex ideas and use artificial intelligence to develop clearer, more visual and more memorable presentations.
If you’re interested in exploring how to work on this kind of skill in your organization, write to me and we’ll look into it.
Do you think a good idea needs a good presentation?
— Berta
