Are you struggling to clearly communicate your strategic initiative to stakeholders, customers or your team? Over the course of 90 minutes, I’ll workshop with you your current narrative, diving deep into your positioning, value proposition, and vision for the future. After our 90 minute session, I will synthesize the narrative work we’ve done into clear and compelling messages for your designated needs. Deliverable: A Narrative Synthesis, complete with session transcript, key messaging outputs, and narrative model(s)

With the EV infrastructure improving each day and the hype for better charging station rest stops coming towards fruition, it’s time we take full advantage of our next great American road trip revolution: rest stop healthcare. While waiting for my Chevy Bolt to charge this past weekend, I couldn’t help but notice what a unique opportunity charging stations offer for our healthcare needs. EV charging does, at the moment, require more time than a simple gas fill up. But what time you spend waiting on the charge is easily made up for with lower costs and more efficient vehicles. Plus, as a road trip nation, we love a good rest stop. We love to stop to stretch our legs, see local roadside attractions, and get some shopping done. So while we’re waiting on our cars to charge, let’s take advantage of this precious time and charge up our health as well. What would this look like? Well, we could take a page out of Tulsa’s gas stations that offer urgent care clinics and start offering them at charging stations. Or we could lean into the wellness and fitness side of things, especially since driving is such a sedentary activity. Like public outdoor gym equipment for adults right next to a playground for kids, along with designated areas for yoga or meditation. Or how about health kiosks that check your vitals inside the fast-food chain? Or a pharmacy that fills your prescription while your car charges? Another added benefit is we’d be expanding healthcare services to underserved areas. Many small towns along major driving routes have just a handful of services available to them, with the closest hospital usually far away. If EV rest stops offer more than just coffee and charging, local residents could have easier access to care thanks to the new infrastructure investment. There’s plenty of existing healthcare designs we could incorporate into our rest stop EVolution. If we’re investing in making each EV charging station an oasis with lounges, wifi and shopping, why not dig a little deeper and include healthcare services as well? Ari Mostov is a healthcare narrative strategist, working with healthcare innovators to create a new narrative for health. Learn more at wellplay.world

By now, you’ve probably heard about UVP or Unique Value Proposition. This is a marketing term that helps you communicate what differentiates your solution from the competition’s. Plenty of great resources exist for crafting a UVP, but there’s an unusual challenge in designing UVPs for healthcare. Healthcare is a complex system with multiple stakeholders. And guess what? You need a UVP for each stakeholder group. Maybe you’ve already cracked the UVP for your target customer. Say you’ve created a medtech device for patients with diabetes. Awesome, the patient knows why your device is unique and what makes it the best fit for them and they decide to use it. But what about the clinicians, the ones caring for the patient? And the payers, the one paying for the device? And the policymakers, the ones granting market access? Does your UVP make sense to them and what they value? Probably not. You need a Unique Value Proposition for each stakeholder group. Because even if your solution is for one stakeholder, you’re not going to find much traction in commercializing your product unless you have designed a UVP for all the players involved. So how do you craft a UVP for each stakeholder, while also remaining true to your product and company? First, you need to know your company’s narrative. What’s your history? Your present? How do you imagine the future and how you will shape it? Next, identify the values of your stakeholders. What clinicians value is slightly different than what patients value. What regulators prioritize will be different than what payers prioritize. Each healthcare stakeholder, although all in the same industry, will have different needs. Then you can start crafting your UVPs based on each stakeholders’ unique context. I recommend using analogies as part of your process, as it provides a quick reference for each specific stakeholder. Yes, healthcare is complex. Yet by developing UVPs for each stakeholder, you are able to agilely respond to their different and emerging needs. By customizing for each stakeholder, you remain relevant and gain their buy-in as you bring your product to market. Craft UVPs that are just as unique as each stakeholder and you will find yourself well on your way to success. Ari Mostov is a healthcare narrative strategist. She helps healthcare leaders navigate disruption through the power of storytelling. To learn more, visit www.wellplay.world

Innovation can often feel like a struggle. Especially when you’re leading a team to build something that’s never quite been done before, while also convincing stakeholders to buy-in to something that has no guaranteed success. So you re-read The Innovator’s Dilemma, compile data in support of your proposal, google “innovation success stories” and somehow come across this blog post. Hi, welcome. I’m glad you’re here. Let’s pause and talk about those “innovation success stories”. Innovation success stories are always about innovations that already exist. From the invention of the wheel to driverless vehicles, these stories recount what has already occurred through the typical story structure: a beginning, middle and end. That’s what stories do — they tell us what happened. The stories we tell about how those great ideas became innovations don’t necessarily guide us as we seek to overcome our innovation struggles. Yet the innovation narrative is different. A narrative is a larger system of stories, woven together with a beginning and middle, but the end has yet to be determined. It has a hoped for end, and a number of individual stories that support it, yet it’s evolving. And with innovation, when we are creating and implementing something new, we cannot know the end state ahead of time. We have an idea, but not certainty. We must evolve, tapping into what we do know, and following that journey of ideation to implementation. The innovation narrative guides us in the innovation process, providing engagement, alignment and mobilization to deliver new value. It’s a mechanism for agility and motivation, giving companies the North Star they need to transform a desire into reality. Here are three ways the innovation narrative can support you and your team: Engagement One of the most challenging aspects of innovation is engagement. If you’re an organization that is struggling to get support for a new endeavor, or your team is overwhelmed with their other tasks, a narrative provides an effective tool to grab everyone’s attention and cut through the noise. As Caroline Bartel and Raghu Garud note, “innovation narratives are powerful mechanisms for translating ideas across the organization so that they are comprehensible.” With the innovation narrative, complex ideas are made relevant and compelling, helping everyone prioritize the project. Alignment Another key asset of the innovation narrative is the ability to develop consensus and direction. Innovation invites diversity, tangential thinking and association. It requires the ability to embrace possibilities, while also finding a way forward. A narrative is able to find commonality, framing multiple perspectives into a cohesive, aligned strategy. As Carl Rhodes and Andrew Brown argue, “[innovation] narratives frame ambiguity, complexity, and even paradoxical situations in an approachable way by visualizing possibilities Mobilization Most critically, the innovation narrative goes beyond the hype and promise of what’s possible, and instead mobilizes the organization to deliver their innovation goals. Francesco Zurlo and Cabirio Cautela write,“the [innovation] narrative acts as a tool that the company uses to implement innovation processes. In the current competitive context dominated by open innovation, where the companies become permeable to spurs, ideas, technologies, and relationships, the ability to structure the narrative becomes fundamental in attracting the resources and relationships necessary for the company’s competitive and innovative goals.” The innovation narrative becomes a part of the company’s culture and behavior, transforming the day-to-day operations into an engine for value creation. Through the power of narrative, innovation is not an ad-hoc, wishful-thinking approach to competitiveness, but rather a paradigm shift in the “how-to” and “why” of the company. The innovation narrative provides guidance and meaning for each individual, team and organization to create what has yet to exist. While storytelling is essential for celebrating successful innovations, it’s narrative that provides the fertile ground for innovation to be realized. With the innovation narrative, we are able to engage, align and mobilize throughout the innovation process. Too often innovations are lost in the unpredictability of human interaction, trounced by competing demands and vague goals. With the innovation narrative, we can always find our North Star, and keep moving towards that new reality. Acknowledgement: A special thank you to Matthew Lewis for his feedback, Jennifer Kenny for the mentorship and groundbreaking work in innovation, and researchers Rebecca Price, Judy Matthew and Cara Wrigley. Ari Mostov is a narrative strategist, creating innovation narratives for category disruptive companies. Learn more at www.wellplay.world *updated August 30, 2023

90 Minute Narrative Are you struggling to clearly communicate your strategic initiative to stakeholders, customers or your team? ​ Over the course of 90 minutes, WellPlay will workshop with you your current narrative, diving deep into your positioning, value proposition, and vision for the future. After our 90 minute session, WellPlay will synthesize the narrative work we’ve done into clear and compelling messages for your designated needs. ​ Price: $1200* ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ * WellPlay offers sliding scale pricing for historically underserved leaders (racialized communities, LGBTQ+, disabled) of non-profits and early stage start ups. Contact us to learn more. “Ari helped take Vot-ER’s story and my story and bring them together beautifully. I have succinct and catchy ways to talk about Vot-ER with a range of audiences thanks to her careful weaving of narrative!” - Aliya Bhatia Executive Director, Vot-ER Ready to flip the script? Schedule a free 30 minute discovery call I'M READY

How would you describe your current users? Health Entertainment How can health organizations create fan-worthy products, policies, and experiences? ​ With Health Entertainment, you can transform patients into fans. Learn how to make your health offering more engaging, enduring and empowering with lessons from entertainment and narrative design. ​ BOOK NOW Workshop Ideal for: product, design, marketing and medical affairs teams. Brochure ​ ​ Ready to razzle dazzle them? Schedule a free 30 minute discovery call I'M READY

Selected Engagements Trade Association We worked with this trade association on their narrative strategy to engage Key Opinion Leaders. Series C Start Up We crafted a new narrative and product engagement strategy for this high growth start up. Medical Affairs We crafted a narrative strategy with the Medical Affairs team that was scaled throughout the company as they navigated new technologies. Corporate Venture We advised this Corporate Venture arm on new frameworks for industry and emerging trends. Cross Industry We worked with a coalition of industry leaders to create new QA practices to match the pace of innovation. Pharma We crafted a direct-to-consumer narrative strategy for a new customer engagement organization. Our Hollywood Legacy As storytellers, they excel at reframing disengaging, taboo topics into accessible and engaging content The Hunting Ground comes as startling exposé of rape crimes on U.S. campuses, institutional cover-ups, and the brutal social toll on victims and their families. Weaving together verité footage and first-person testimonies, the film follows survivors as they pursue their education while fighting for justice — despite harsh retaliation, harassment, and pushback at every level. 'Til It Happens to You' is a song produced and performed by American singer Lady Gaga . She co-wrote the song with Diane Warren for the 2015 documentary film The Hunting Ground , which deals with campus rape in the United States. It was later included as part of a public service announcement video directed by Catherine Hardwicke . ​ Impact Metrics: Support for bi-partisan federal legislation, including the Campus Accountability and Safety Act. Over 440,000+ It’s On Us Pledges 34% increase in calls to the sexual assault hotline Over 17.5 billion media impressions ​ Read more about 'The Hunting Ground' and 'It Happens Here' in The Huffington Post We believe in a future where health is fan-worthy. In order to have fans, you have to have something to root for. But, it's hard to root for something as intangible and abstract as health. Which is why we created Virus Hunters . We take the microscopic concepts of health and bring them to life in Augmented Reality. Virus Hunters is a geolocation mobile game where players must hunt, battle, and capture viruses and other pathogens in augmented reality. ​ Virus Hunters has been awarded Winner for: Best Mobile Game Chainsaw Film and Game Festival 2020 Center For Health Experience Design Innovation for at Home Pandemic Solutions 2020 and featured in: Scientific American: Could Video Games and Other Entertainment Help Slow The Spread of COVID19? Business Wire: Games Industry Unites to Promote World Health Organization Messages Against COVID-19; Launch #PlayApartTogether Campaign Mic: Coronavirus-themed video games are everywhere ​ ​ Tired of losing the plot? Schedule a free 30 minute discovery call I'M READY Home About Narrative Strategy 90 Minute Narrative See Our Work Blog Contact Privacy Policy Terms & Conditions Search Results Let's Connect Based in Los Angeles, California First Name Email Last Name Subject Leave us a message... Submit We'll be in touch. Follow Us Twitter Medium LinkedIn