Since the early 2000s, business storytelling has become a widely accepted strategy for companies around the world. Stories are harnessed in advertising, marketing, PR, and even leadership and culture development. Now for the first time ever, Once Upon an Innovation builds upon these practices and applies story techniques to creative problem solving and innovation.

Stories light up the imagination, fostering the creative collaboration necessary to inspire, develop, and commercialize winning ideas. Stories also trigger the brain to release oxytocin, the trust and empathy hormone, making them a powerful tool for understanding and addressing users’ needs. This also means that storytelling methods can be applied to the other half of the battle—getting others on board with new ideas as they move through the various checkpoints in an organization.

This easy-to-read, “how to” guidebook provides story-based strategies and tools to:

• rally stakeholders and a team around a vision.
• gain empathy for and insights into users.
• generate rich and meaningful ideas for products, programs, processes, and services.
• bring formative ideas to life for testing and prototyping.
• develop storytelling skills to persuade and inspire others.

With an engaging balance of anecdotes, theories, and tools, Jean Storlie and Mimi Sherlock take their combined 50+ years of experience to illustrate how storytelling can be used to accelerate innovation and lead change.

Table of Contents
Once Upon an Innovation