Storytelling most definitely matters
A common theme at Innolead Impact 2024? Crafting and telling stories is an absolute must.
Monday, November 11, 2024
Impact made impact
I don’t know about you, but when autumn descends, I feel myself slowing down and getting ready for the chilly rainy season in Portland (at least until February; that’s when I start fantasizing about going to Mexico). Seasonal change moving into the end of the year does that to me, and this year has been particularly stressful.
I have been craving lots of distractions from current events, so it was great timing to dive into work and participate at Innolead Impact October 23-25. Territory attended last year, and we found the content, networking, and learning to be incredibly valuable. We knew we had to go again.
If you’re unfamiliar, Innolead is an independent media and events company focused on helping change-makers in large organizations deliver real innovation impact. They’re especially good with events, as Parker Lee and I experienced in Boston. With just the right amount of attendees to allow for quality time with peers across a wide swath of industries, each conversation felt meaningful. While a lot of the session content and product demos focused on AI, there was also plenty that didn’t. A good balance of “the future is here” mixed with “we’re not quite future-ready, and that’s why we’re here.”
My takeaways from Impact 2024
This being my first innovation conference, I was curious about who would turn out at the event. Innovation means so many things depending on industry, brand, and how businesses see their future. After meeting a myriad of R&D leads, communications specialists, engineers, scientists, and product managers, it became apparent that bringing different perspectives and skills together at Impact made it that much more engaging. I was not bored with any conversation! For example, meeting an SVP of engineering at NTT Data who painted a fascinating portrait of how they’re using GenAI across their portfolio. Or listening to the fascinating life of tech maven and innovation pioneer Mei Jiang. Mei spoke candidly about the urgency for organizations to consider inclusive practices with regard to “democratizing innovation.” I could talk to Mei for hours about how humans (mostly) seek collective purpose and solutions! Following up with you, Mei. 😀
Another takeaway: While AI is driving much of what’s changing in innovation spaces, how it delivers on all the big promises we keep hearing about is definitely still TBD. The biggest standout in how an industry is transforming quickly outside of Fortune 100 tech? Healthcare. Dr. John Halamka, President of Mayo Clinic Platform, provided a glimpse in his mainstage talk about AI and the future of healthcare. He recently shared similar accounts with the World Economic Forum, which you can see here.
Finally, Parker and I both heard probably a dozen times throughout the conference leading up to our Friday workshop: storytelling absolutely matters to innovation. We heard this in other breakout sessions, in introductions, during some great conversations at the Territory table, and those in-between moments at breakfast, lunch, and evening networking events. Storytelling has a significant impact on how an idea or asking for $$$ can be greenlit if your story is clear and compelling.
Storytelling wins (once again)
It’s always a thrill to be in a packed room with someone who knows how to facilitate AND tell a few good stories. Parker rocked our one-hour workshop, The Best Story Always Wins: How To Build and Maintain Senior Leadership Support. Having done these workshops for over two decades, he spoke to the importance of centering people in stories.
Parker opened the session by asking the group: what is storytelling? What are the components of making a good story? Using Toy Story, the widely seen and beloved animated movie, as an example narrative arc, he described the elements of its story. From there, folks broke out into groups and selected from a set of business scenarios to construct their story, eventually presenting theirs to the room. All this in an hour! It went by fast. Be it an executive pitch, a workgroup pitch, a visionary pitch, etc., using words AND imagery to tell a personal, persuasive story was our message. This seemed to resonate with the room.
I asked some of our attendees to share what they took away from the workshop:
“Aside from just enjoying the workshop and the energy that you and Parker brought, I very much appreciated the takeaway of having the worksheets and prompts, which will allow me to take it back more easily to my organization. I’m a big fan of tools that allow me to practice what I’ve learned!”
— Marjolein de Nijs Bik, Senior Innovation Specialist at the Colonial Pipeline Company
“It was a clear approach that is often overlooked, and this means it was easy to put into practice. That sort of repeatable framework is great for people to use in getting started leveraging storytelling.”
— Dennis Smith, Senior Communications Manager at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
On top of the great workshop content, our design and marketing team supplied interesting instructional materials, which attendees got in their inbox post-conference as Marjolein mentioned. I felt so much pride in Territory’s branding—playful, bold, creative—which really stood out amongst more traditional tech, enterprise, and government branding.
Telling stories is in all of our DNA
I think what I appreciated most about our week in Boston with a diverse group of innovators is confirming that the art of storytelling resonates with everyone. It IS innately human. As my Lyft driver told me on my way to the airport after the conference, “You can’t be an interesting person without telling a few good stories that speak to who you are.”
