The Power of Storytelling in Innovation
Nicolò Andreula on why human touch is the scarce asset in the age of AI, and how stories move people that numbers never will.
With Nicolò Andreula
From The Corporate Venturing Podcast, brought to you by Open Road Ventures
4 things this conversation gets into
- 01Scarcity in the age of AI: human touch over information
- 02How stories land in the brain, and why that matters for adoption
- 03Humanising AI: the bot that asks for help
- 04Internal storytelling that actually moves a transformation
Nicolo Andreula is an economist, entrepreneur, investor and strategic consultant. After a global career across the UN, Goldman Sachs, McKinsey and a boutique firm in Singapore advising Google, Uber, Netflix and Microsoft, he returned to Bari to build Disal Consulting, write books including Flow Generation and co-create ABCD, A Bari Capitale Digitale.
Davide Ritorto is a management engineer from Italy with an international MBA, currently working at Lamborghini. He is what some call an intrapreneur, passionate about open innovation and corporate venturing, and driven by curiosity about how things work and how to make them work even better. Through Open Road Ventures he sets out to inspire and inform other innovators, intrapreneurs and dreamers.
He founded Open Road Ventures as a weekly publication on open innovation and corporate venturing, and The Corporate Venturing Podcast grew out of it. He also mentors startups at Motor Valley Accelerator and sits on the Open Innovation Advisory Board at UC Berkeley Haas.
The Corporate Venturing Podcast is made by Open Road Ventures. The Bundl Venture Club is a partner of the show.
Read the full show notes
🎙️ Welcome to a new episode of The Corporate Venturing Podcast!
When technology, products and even tone of voice can be copied overnight, what really makes innovation stand out?
In this episode, I’m joined by Nicolò Andreula — economist, entrepreneur, investor and strategic consultant. After a global career across the UN, Goldman Sachs, McKinsey and a boutique firm in Singapore advising Google, Uber, Netflix and Microsoft, Nicolò came back to Bari to build Disal Consulting, write books like Flow Generation and co-create ABCD – A Bari Capitale Digitale.
Together, we explore how storytelling can make or break innovation: inside companies, in the market, and even at city level.
In this episode, Nicolò shares insights on:
🧠 Scarcity in the age of AI – why the rare asset isn’t information anymore, but human touch, empathy and the ability to filter and frame meaning
⚗️ How stories hit the brain – from amygdala “fight–flight–freeze” reactions to dopamine, oxytocin and endorphins, and why people remember stories more than slides
🚗 The Toyota family-car example – how a safety campaign built around emotion, not crash-test numbers, can create trust without ever saying “trust us”
💉 What vaccine campaigns got wrong – and what that teaches corporate innovators about talking to fears and emotions, not just rational arguments
🚠 Funicolare Vesuviana & the power of a jingle – turning a scary new transport system into a joyful collective experience through music and narrative
🤖 Humanizing AI and chatbots – the story of a “younger colleague” bot that asks for help instead of pretending to be perfect, and why that drove adoption and ownership
📩 Internal storytelling for transformation – why one-size-fits-all corporate emails fail, and how to segment employees by emotions and attitudes to change
🧍♂️ Selective vulnerability in leadership – from the “pratfall effect” to the Starbucks example, how admitting the right flaws can bring people behind a new strategy
🌍 ABCD – A Bari Capitale Digitale – how a “crazy” vision, a name, and a story turned Bari into a magnet for talent, companies and digital nomads
We close the episode on a personal note, looking at the moment that most shaped Nicolò’s view on storytelling, strategy and innovation, and how he turned the shock of COVID into a new way of working and living.
Resources:
• Open Road Ventures Newsletter
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