STORYTELLING.BIZ: MAKING BUSINESS CASES FRIENDLY, ENGAGING STUDENTS THROUGH STORIES

The case method is a didactic technique that has shown successful results in the learning of business students. It is a tool that brings the student closer to a real problem for analysis and resolution, allowing him to develop specific disciplinary skills, as well as transversal ones (critical thinking and problem solving, for example). As these are real situations, where on many occasions they can find out how the actors in the case solved the problem and what the result was, the student's curiosity is strongly aroused. However, since the delivery of cases in most cases is done in writing and the amount of information required for analysis is abundant, the student tends to disperse and lose attention, often guided by intuition and nurturing their points of view only through the stages of discussion in small groups and plenary, thus losing the opportunity to develop transversal skills.Since prehistoric times, storytelling has been a powerful tool for transmitting knowledge, culture and values ​​as well as developing cognitive skills. The reality and fantasy of antiquity has been preserved through time through oral transmission; the story, the fable and even the parable have always been effective instruments for teaching values.Storytelling is "a strategy to humanize learning" (EduTrends, 2017). Through storytelling, it is possible to understand what is beyond business logic, such as emotions, values, dreams and desires, as well as the previous experience and history of the actors of the family businesses that influence their actions and decisions.Simmons (cited in Harbin and Humphrey, 2010) points out that teaching through scientific analysis is a “push” strategy, since it involves convincing others through cold and hard data, which produces an antagonistic conversation, while storytelling is a strategy of "pulling", since it implies that the audience participates with their own imagination in the recreation of the story, that is, it turns the listener into a collaborator in the narrative, instead of a rival to be convinced.This document presents the results of the experimentation of educational innovation Storytelling.biz: making business cases friendly.For the development of this research, a mixed, quasi-experimental design was used.The objective was to determine to what extent the delivery of case study content from the business area improves the attention and engagment of the student as well as the development of disciplinary competencies compared to the traditional format.The implementation was carried out in two courses, Organizational Behavior and Pricing Strategy during the semesters February - June and August - December 2021. Since these periods corresponded to the pandemic period, both courses ran in digital format.The experiment was designed to deliver content to students with the storytelling format to compare their performance results and their level of involvement with those of the traditional format. As a result of the experimentation, it was found that the cases delivered in storytelling format improve both in performance and student involvement compared to the results of the traditional format.