In his famous Moon Speech, US President John F. Kennedy demonstrated how electrifying a vision of the future could be. He spoke to his nation through the metaphor of a hopeful, great story that culminated in 1969. America was to land on the moon before the end of the decade. Not because it was easy, but because it was hard. It was because of this story that the US invested billions in developments that were unthinkable before.

Kennedy’s speech is a lesson for applied storytelling. In a motivating story is a protagonist who fights as an active problem solver, as the first for a thing.

KI pioneer Jürgen Schmidhuber formed his future story at the age of 15. He would build intelligence that would make him unnecessary as a human being. Today, billions of his neural networks are in use every day. He realizes the active neural networks that address the world’s major problems.

Xi Yinping is starting with an equally great vision. With a crystal clear story, he wants to make China the leading AI nation by 2030.

It is obvious: In the age of the beginning of artificial intelligence, the role of humans in competition and economy changes fundamentally. Those who now act without an image of the future are lost. But how can we, as entrepreneurs, develop such a narrative?

1. First of all, our pain must be significant enough. Those who work for a long time without a future story, travel from one crisis to the next in visual flight. Europe, the people’s parties, churches, banks, or schools – they all make themselves vulnerable through their lack of vision. Instead of acting and directing, they have to put up with the losses of citizens, voters, encouragement, members, and turnover.

2. We must be aware that a mature, clear story needs adequate development time.

3. To develop this vision, we need to engage in dialogue with all stakeholders. With our colleagues, employees, customers, competitors, and experts.

4. Now the „wisdom of the many“ comes to light. Our task is to moderate them sensitively until the story is understandable and round.

5. We must open ourselves to unbridled learning and be prepared to overcome our limited perspective in favor of profitable insight. We also listen to our critics.

6. We set up a process – at best with an expert.

7. To back up our story, we compare ourselves with all our major competitors – and outperform them.

9. If our future story stands, we can entirely derive all the measures from it.

Believe uninhibitedly in your future. Win and find the employees, form teams that inspire and deploy you. With your future story, you will have a lucid, pure, and detailed visual and narrative imagination that you can supplement with critical figures and agile methods. This story will be your new world map to navigate safely into the future.