The Braun Collection

True Business Adventure Tales, Comic Books, and Conversation Cards

The Braun Collection is a small, growing suite of True Business Adventure Tales, comic books, and conversation cards that intimately acquaint business enthusiasts with leaders across industries and geographies. Our action-packed tales and visual stories go deep fast to uncover the lives, backgrounds, obstacles, opportunities, and best and worst ideas of the decision-makers who have changed business. For coaches and educators, our products include teaching tools such as teaching notes, presentations, short videos, and LIVE VIDEO VISITS with authors and subjects of the books and comic books..

Readers of our books and comic books learn to synthesize and summarize key patterns of business executives, develop and support arguments on a variety of business topics, and show curiosity about the decisions made and not made by CEOs.

In short, Braun Collection books, comic books, and conversation cards show decision-making as it is applied in practice by an executive across an organization throughout a career.

Using CEO Memoirs & Biographies in the Classroom

Memoirs and biographies combine the case method with more immersive and experiential learning because readers are immersed in the story and narrative. Narratives are arguably the most effective way to teach and learn in general. Studies have shown that students consistently recall information tied to storytelling better than material presented without storytelling. Organizational psychologists have found that learning from a well-told story is remembered “far longer” than learning derived from facts and figures and that facts are 20 times more likely to be remembered if they’re part of a story.

Braun Collection books and comic books enable business educators to use narrative to enhance the learning experience of their students. Further, it seems that people who read narratives that “oscillate” (i.e., the narratives do not offer a story of clear ascent or descent but rather a story of oscillating successes and failures) have better resilience later in their own lives and careers when making their own decisions. This is because they have reference points (the prior narratives) that consist of patterns of oscillation as opposed to clear-cut ascent or descent2. As we know in real life, decisions rarely involve clear-cut ascent or descent situations. Braun Collection materials do show neither deeply flawed heroes nor perfect decision makers, rather people who deal with the ups and downs of the issues and
opportunities in their lives and careers.

When using a True Business Adventure Tale (CEO memoir or biography), business educators have the opportunity to develop these business competencies in students. Such competencies are in high demand in the business workplace.

Ask students to:

SUMMARIZE the actions, people, and topics and SYNTHESIZE all the information into the theme of the book. Synthesizing key topics and themes is important in business.
DEVELOP ARGUMENTS about and CRITICALLY APPRAISE key actions and decisions made by executives. Being able to develop and appraise various actions is important in business.
OFFER SUPPORT for their arguments using text and facts as opposed to pure opinion and conjecture. Knowing how to offer factual, even if not scientific, evidence is important in business.
REFLECT ON how the subjects and authors views and actions compare and contrast to their own. A level of appropriate reflection is shown to build a level of warmth and relationships that matter for business.
SHOW CURIOSITY about business leaders through asking questions of the authors, if the LIVE VIDEO VISIT option is chosen by educators. Asking good questions is a vital business skill.