The Tenth Face of Innovation: The Storyteller
Editor’s Note: This is part of a multi-part series about the book, The Ten Faces of Innovation, written by Tom Kelley. You can read some of the other parts of this series here, here, here, and here.
The tenth and last face of innovation as discussed in Tom Kelley’s, “The Ten Faces of Innovation,” is The Storyteller, which needs no definition or explanation; a Storyteller tells stories.
What isn’t as obvious is that good storytelling is essential. We might claim to respond to data and evidence and facts and truth, but our own brains often respond to a narrative, story, or anecdote much more strongly, even if the truthfulness of that story is stretched a bit [1]. Principles are more memorable within a context or story and the emotional response to a story is usually stronger compared to a list of facts or statistics [2].
Unfortunately, people will sometimes use the power of stories inappropriately, including in political campaigns, propaganda pieces, and advertisements to name a few. You might have even had the experience where a piece of gossip was shared with you, and it became difficult to forget that information even if later you learned it was untrue [3]. This doesn’t mean we should disband with stories just because they can be used improperly, but we should recognize that story telling makes a difference for good or for ill. Thus, curating this skill (and identifying when it is going awry) is a good thing to develop as designers, engineers, and innovators, when we are presenting our ideas to anyone including our family, community, clients, or colleagues.
Tom Kelley starts, not surprisingly, with a story from Japan. A dog name Hachiko would walk with his master to the train station every morning before work. Hachiko would wait for him to return and did this for many years. One day, the owner died unexpectedly during the day and did not return. Hachiko would dutifully return to the same train station everyday for the next 10 years waiting patiently for his master to return. Of course, the master never did and eventually Hachiko died at the same spot he waited for all those years. Today at Shibuya station there is a statue dedicated to the dog at the entrance to the station now called “Hachiko’s entrance.” Many Japanese people and children know this story and can use it to inspire feelings of duty, dedication, and loyalty.
Every country and culture has similar stories that help communicate a principle or ideal to live by. Many corporation’s vision or mission statements are nice and sound professional but only the ones that are backed-up by a foundational story or quintessential anecdote can be described, used, and ultimately remembered. If you are wanting team members, or others to support your cause, the first place to look might be to a story. Likewise, if you want support for your idea, design, or innovation, a story can be much more memorable and last decades and through multiple generations like the story of Hachiko the dog.
Kelley next shares a story about Medtronic who leverages storytelling to stay motivated and focused on the right thing. He describes that Medtronic, a biomedical engineering company who designs and manufactures medical devices for patients such as pacemakers, will bring in patients, or relatives of patients, and have them tell their story about how a product saved, extended, or improved their own health and, in many cases, their complete lives. Talk about live changing! Sure, identifying needs that a future product will address using interviews and other requirements gathering activities is correct, but Medtronic finds value in revisiting the patients and then hearing the stories from users of their products after the products have been on the market for many years. These are more than testimonials to sell more products to other customers. These stories are shared with the engineers and designers directly such that the desire to positively impact the lives of others is redoubled renewing a sense of focus on designing high quality products as a team and company. Evidently, even the most restrained, stoic, and expressionless engineers on the team tear-up from these stories. I don’t cry often, but those moments would be rare and valuable moments on the job site. I could probably use a little more of that in my life.
Kelley continues with the storytelling involved with fortune cookies. These very short stories or fortunes, sometimes only a few words in length, and found in the middle of a plastic-tasting cookie, often cap off a meal with a laugh, a smirk, and at minimum a conversation about its validity as a predictive source of truth. The possible memories these fortunes evoke from their very terse stories and the follow-on conversations are much more lasting than the shards of cookie remains on the plate. Even if the fortunes are completely ridiculous, they serve their purpose with a touch of mirth to lighten the blow when the check is delivered.
One take-a-way is that storytelling, delivered at the right time, can help turn a team around who just received some negative news. Likewise, it can help present a compelling innovative design or solution to a problem at the very moment when a pain-point is identified and illustrated. A customer might not remember the exact dimensions or features of your product, but they’ll remember the emotional relief they felt when your product came to save the day. That’s the power of storytelling.
As designers, we should be willing to tell stories. It’s a skill like many others which we can develop and curate. Yes, there may be someone on our team who is more experienced or practiced in storytelling and who leads out on certain presentations, but each of us will have times and moments during which we will be the sole Storyteller.
The obvious way to develop this skill is to practice telling stories. Too few of us take the time to really practice, thinking we can perform and recall everything on the spot. Instead, turn on your smart phone, face the camera toward you, and record yourself telling a story before it’s go time. Then watch it. You’ll be surprised how difficult it is, but at the same time when things are difficult you know you’re stretching your abilities and growing. A second idea is to study story tellers. Find someone who you like to listen to and really study their style. It could be some TED talk speaker, a relative, or someone you hang out with. You don’t have to copy everything they do, but with an eye to self improvement, you’ll get more out of it than just the story, if you’re looking.
Lastly, storytelling can enhance many of our own interactions with other people. We can often share our values, our attitudes, and our perspectives so much better than through a simple fact. An awesome resume may get you the interview, but the storytelling can get you the job. Being able to share a personal experience, or relate an event of someone else if you don’t have your own story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, and with some key lessons learned sprinkled throughout, can make all the difference between just a good interaction and a great one.
[1] Vieira, K. M., & Lane, S. M. (2013). How you lie affects what you remember. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 2(3), 173-178.
[2] Bower, Gordon & Clark, Michal. (1969). Narrative stories as mediators for serial learning. Psychonomic Science. 15. 181-182. 10.3758/BF03332778.
[3] Southwell, B. G., Thorson, E. A., & Sheble, L. (Eds.). (2018). Misinformation and mass audiences. University of Texas Press.
