ate a self-reinforcing loop for
technological success. If one can
tell compelling stories around
technologies, successful adoption
by those who listen or participate
in the story is more likely. Highly
innovative firms treasure and
share their stories, especially
those that encourage innovation
in the face of company procedures or norms [ 3].
The anecdotes presented here
demonstrate the ability of stories to effectively focus people’s
attention onto a given topic and
mobilize effort. Consciously
using stories as the driving force
behind innovation and funneling
group effort into useful, self-sustaining initiatives allows for
long-term innovation.
[ 3] Buckler, S. and Zien,
K. A. “The Spirituality
of Innovation: Learning
from stories.” Journal
of Prod Innovation
Management 13 (1996):
391–405.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Jeffrey Kim (Ph.D.) has
studied technology innova-
tions in engineering and
digital games. He has been
faculty at the University of
March + April 2010
interactions
receive support. Members tell
their stories to Ashoka volunteers and employees, who then
go into the database and seek
similar stories. This provides a
mechanism by which to “match”
solutions from around the world.
This filtering is possible because
very complex, localized phenomena (like difficulty navigating mountainous terrain with
delicate berries loaded on uncaring llamas) are told as stories,
creating a universal link (such
as transport of delicate items
with specific tools, like insulated
medicinal vials).
In this sense, stories provide
a social mechanism by which
new and untried ideas can be listened to and filtered by different
groups with different priorities.
Stories are low-cost, high-impact
ways to present information to
groups regardless of their orientation, technical background or
available resources. In this way,
stories help to cross boundaries
and spark discussion that can
lead to radical changes or the
recombination of existing ideas or
processes.
Storytelling takes designers
through the stages of conflict,
resolution, and closure. It lets
them live through stories in various contexts. Storytelling is also
an effective mechanism to align
the interests of people from different disciplines. It allows people
to test ideas without requiring
individuals to have a wide array
of multidisciplinary domain
knowledge. Experts bring their
domain-specific mental models
of how to think about problems.
When they collaborate with
people from other fields, they all
come with knowledge embedded
in long disciplinary and intellectual histories. Visual design and
ethnography are two well-known
examples of such long history.
Storytelling expects different
perspectives and reveals tension
in different stories told by people
of diverse training and mental
models. It is meant to create the
synthesis of ideas, not homogeneity in perspectives.
Future-thinking applications.
Stories connect designers, users,
and technology. Stories come
to define where technology and
users mismatch. Stories arise
around new situations. Political,
economic, and even weather
changes result in new stories.
Technological change also creates new stories, as well as new
avenues for creating and sharing
stories. Technology adoption can
be heavily influenced by the stories told during the time of initial
deployment. Designers need to
consider the contexts and goals
of potential users to create their
stories, narrative scenarios that
describe how target consumers move through their lives to
accomplish their goals, along
with the challenges they face.
Proposed, hypothetical services
can then be evaluated as helpful, transformational, or unlikely.
After a reasonable set of stories
has been crafted, the essence
of each story, or the core plot
concept, can act as a title. This
provides shorthand for referencing it and talking about it in an
innovation-team environment.
The expectation is that these
stories can serve as a model
that will allow the context to be
manipulated to explore alternative designs and their impact on
potential outcomes.
When stories prepare people
for the use of the technology,
adoption and use can be easier,
increasing sales. This can cre-
Arnold Lund (Ph.D.) has
been at Microsoft for seven
years, innovating and con-
ducting research in areas
such as natural user inter-
faces and creating person-
al experiences. His work on innovation and
storytelling began at Bell Labs and contin-
ued with inventing and incubating new
product concepts at Ameritech, US West
Advanced Technologies, and Sapient.
Caroline Dombrowski
(MLIS, M.Phil) predicts that
digital-game designers will
be the gurus of interactive
online experience in the
next few years. She has
been a research project manager at the
University of Washington for a year. Her
background is in nonprofits, health care,
and proteomics
DOI: 10.1145/1699775.1699781
© 2010 ACM 1072-5220/10/0300 $10.00
