128 – Collaboration and diversity is how you make progress (Rerun)
Filed in Anecdotes, Business storytelling, Corporate Storytelling, Podcast
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Collaboration and diversity bring progress. Listen to hear how one woman defied gender norms to receive recognition for a scientific breakthrough.
This week’s episode is a rerun of Episode 128. With collaboration and diversity more relevant than ever, Shawn and Mark wanted to spotlight this episode for newer listeners while they’re travelling and delivering business storytelling programs.
In this episode, Shawn shares a short but powerful scientific story first encountered in Walter Isaacson’s The Code Breaker. It centres around Jennifer Doudna, an American biochemist, and the decisive steps she took to publish her team’s groundbreaking research. The story highlights the ongoing influence of gender constructs and how they shape our decisions and opportunities.
For your storybank
Tags: action, behaviours, bias, confidence, gender, scientific
This story starts at 04:14
Jennifer Doudna, an American biochemist, collaborated with three other people to write a paper about DNA editing. She wanted it published in the Journal of Science, one of the top peer-reviewed science journals, so she contacted the editors.
Doudna told the editors what the paper contained and that she needed it published quickly. There were other people—competitors—working in the field.
It usually takes several months to have a scientific paper published, sometimes years. But Jennifer said we wanted hers published within a week.
She put a lot of pressure on the editors, and as a result, they published the paper in an extremely short amount of time.
One of her team’s main competitors was headed by Eric Landa and based in Boston. Landa Suggested Doudna had a dodgy arrangement with the Journal. So, Doudna suggested Landa be asked if he had ever pushed to have a paper published quickly.
“Of course I have. I do it all the time,” was Landa’s response.
Anecdote International is a global training and consulting company, specialising in utilising storytelling to bring humanity back to the workforce. Anecdote is now unique in having a global network of over 60 partners in 28 countries, with their learning programs translated into 11 languages, and customers who incorporate these programs into their leadership and sales enablement activities.