Almost every organisation innovates, but only a few gain a reputation for it. Why?

1. WHY DO
INNOVATORS
NEED
A STORY?

2. WHY DO
INNOVATORS
NEED
A STORY?

3. Innovation takes us forward. It enables
businesses to differentiate and grow. It
helps the private and public sectors to solve
customer and citizen problems. And when
we do it well, it rewards risk, creating new
revenue streams and profits.
Innovation is a powerful tool, but without a
story its power is neutered. Without a story,
innovation lacks purpose and appeal.
Without a story, our ideas must develop
their own mode of travel, their own way
of reaching employees, investors, partners
and customers. Without a story, today’s new
thing would look no different to tomorrow’s.
Business has always had a hard time
communicating innovation. The world’s
first powered flight – an achievement of
unimaginable magnitude – was ignored or
disregarded by the vast majority. Such was
the weight of prevailing science claiming that
propelled flight was impossible only a small
minority believed it had really happened.
No newspaper or radio outlet saw fit to send
a reporter to the scene.
Had they bothered to turn up, the media
would have discovered the greatest innovation
story of all time. In a feat of guts and vision,
the Wright brothers, two ordinary bicycle
repairmen, literally flew in the face of all
available scientific knowledge to execute
the world’s first powered flight.
Believing that publicity would harm their ability
to license the technology, the Wright brothers
devoted no resources to marketing and tested
their prototypes in secrecy.
But with no story to legitimize their efforts,
they were quickly overtaken by better funded
rivals. By the 1920s the Wright brothers had
exited the aircraft business altogether.
Their legacy was the gift of flight, and also
a valuable lesson to innovators everywhere:
invest in the power of story.
How does innovation storytelling
create business value?
How do we choose the ideas that become
businesses? How do VCs decide which
start-ups to fund? How do large businesses
not only change direction but choose the
new technologies and ideas that enable
them to do so?
Often what differentiates one idea
from another is the strength of the story.
Storytelling is an engagement tool with the
far-reaching power to unveil the essence
of an idea’s appeal. Products and services
can be imitated. Processes can be learned.
But a genuine story connects with audiences
in a way that transcends the material,
making us feel and believe.
PART ONE
WHY DO INNOVATORS
NEED A STORY?
Innovation is big business.
Total, global R&D spend –
the amount the world invests
in new ideas every year –
runs to around two trillion
dollars. That’s equal in size
to India’s entire economy.
INNOVATION IS A POWERFUL
TOOL,BUT WITHOUT A STORY
ITS POWER IS NEUTERED
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4. 1 EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
A true story, well told, enables your people,
whether they work in the lab or on the front
line, to understand why the work they do
matters. This inevitably boosts engagement.
An engaged workforce is also a productive
one.
2 DIFFERENTIATION
A good story differentiates you in the eyes
of your most important audiences. Whether
you need to communicate to consumers,
partners or investors, an innovation story
sets your approach apart from the rest.
3 PITCHING POWER
An innovation story is a pitch, an appeal to
an external audience to invest in you, to follow
you. In a world where ideas are cheap and
plentiful, a story resonates in a way that
a formulaic pitch does not.
4 A CLEAR VISION
A good story enables your own people to
articulate the value of their work to others.
If they can explain the vision, they will have
a better chance of attracting others to the
project, which gives it a higher chance of
success.
5 FASTER HORSES
Innovation is a race. There is often no prize
for second. Storytelling gives your idea a
head start in a continuous race of competing
innovations.
THERE ARE TANGIBLE
REASONS WHY
GOOD INNOVATION
NEEDS A STORY.
HERE ARE FIVE.
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5. 10 INNOVATION
STORYLINES TO WATCH
1 THE JOURNEY
Every innovation journey starts with ‘what if?’
– a singular question of counter-cultural
clarity and vision. What if I could access all
of my music from a single device? What if
maps could update in real-time? What if any
car could become a taxi? As in the classic
quest storyline, those innovators embarking
on an entrepreneurial journey ultimately
glean an important truth that enriches us
all. Former economist Muhammad Yunus
pioneered microcredit and ended up
empowering a nation of female entrepreneurs
in the predominantly Islamic Bangladesh.
2 BREAKTHROUGH IDEA
Without a single academic qualification
between them, the Wright brothers solved
a complex problem that had evaded the
world’s scientific community for hundreds
of years. The brothers owned a bike repair
shop, and it was this unique perspective that
formed the basis of their breakthrough idea –
to stabilise the biplane’s rigged wings in the
same way a cardboard inner tube box retains
its shape when twisted.
3 METHODOLOGY
Plenty of innovators claim ownership of
a unique innovation methodology. These
methods only become successful stories
when the innovator’s ideas begin to bear fruit.
Witness the story of Google’s 20 per cent
time, which entered into folklore on the back
of successful launches for Gmail, AdSense
and Google News. On closer scrutiny it
appears the management policy (which
apparently allowed all employees to
reserve 20 per cent of their time for blue
sky projects) was more fiction than fact.
The story nonetheless provided huge value
for the search giant in the form of recruitment
and investor confidence.
4 HOME OF THE BOFFIN
As romantic as it seems, not all innovation
comes out of the garage. Most successful
innovation is born in the lab, and most of the
biggest labs are attached to sectors in which
technological advancement is a pre-requisite
of survival. But where innovation is essential,
the protagonists tend to be long on patience
and heavy on investment funds. It’s why
a good R&D story must stretch out of the
ordinary and into new territory if it is to avoid
unoriginality. Bear in mind that the only three
sectors represented in the top ten R&D spend
list are technology, automotive and pharma.
In a sea of start-ups, these corporate titans
must work very hard to win our engagement –
an original story is a reliable route.
PART TWO
THE STORYLINE
How do businesses tell
their innovation story?
Human beings have been
telling stories for 27,000 years.
In that time, seven basic plots
have emerged – overcoming
the monster, rags to riches,
the quest, voyage and return,
comedy, tragedy, rebirth –
and business has borrowed
from them all.
Innovation stories tend
to follow classic story arcs,
in some cases imitating and
in others improving on the
seven basic plots. Compare
‘overcoming the monster’,
in which the hero must
fight and slay the evil force
threatening mankind, to any
fintech competing against an
incumbent bank, or indeed
any number of action and
adventure films.
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6. 5 THE VISIONARY GENIUS
Steve Jobs’s ability to bend an entire industry
to his will, and to mastermind the disruption
of several other sectors, puts him in a
visionary category of his own. You might
also add Henry Ford, Bill Gates, even Jeff
Bezos to the list. There are many others. But
what set Jobs apart was his skill as a master
storyteller. Jobs was as meticulous about
public relations as he was about design and
innovation. It ensured the Apple innovation
story was always the Jobs story, and vice
versa, to the benefit of both.
6 FOR THE HELL OF IT
Seat of the pants entrepreneurship is a
story that travels well. There’s something
admirable about intuitive risk-taking, and
some innovators have based entire careers
on telling that story. Richard Branson is a
notable example. Branson’s personal brand
is built around the lovable rogue. His core
story is about tipping the rules of business
in favour of the customer, disrupting greedy
incumbent business models in the process.
Branson even wrote a book called SCREW
IT, LET’S DO IT.
No matter how rigorous the due diligence,
when Branson tries to change the market
the accompanying story usually leads on
rebellion.
7 SERENDIPITY
In 2007, designers Brian Chesky and Joe
Gebbia struggled to pay the rent on their
San Francisco apartment. Ahead of a
popular design conference in their home
town, the pair decided to turn their loft into
a lodging space. The website they created
featured low-fi pictures of three airbeds plus
the promise of a decent breakfast. AirBnB
was born, continuing the canon of innovation
by chance, which includes Teflon, the x-ray
and Velcro.
8 PARTNERSHIP
A deliberate clash of ideas lights a fuse
under development. The inherent tension
of an unusual partnership is what makes
it a story – industry riding to the rescue
of government, local start-ups incubating
innovation at a local school, a chocolate
bar teaming up with a technology giant.
Innovation often needs the oxygen of
fresh perspective.
9 GOOD VERSUS EVIL
Good versus evil is often a battle of ideas,
with new products and features representing
broader consumer and business ideals.
The greatest trick an innovator can pull
is to convince audiences that its brand
of innovation has greater intrinsic value.
Mac versus PC was less about what we
wanted our computers to do – and more
about how we wanted to be perceived while
we were doing it. Demonizing the PC helped
Apple to differentiate its offering clearly and
definitively.
10 AGAINST THE ODDS
It’s a truism that stories depicting the
success of the underdog do well. But there
are many different ways to celebrate the
little guy – most contain a seemingly
insurmountable barrier: received wisdom,
an oppressive patent portfolio or a tough
economic climate. Intrapreneurship (the
term given to employees who are assigned
to work on a special project within the
corporate environment) is quite often
a triumph of guts and intuition against
a domineering corporate culture.
THERE’S SOMETHING ADMIRABLE
ABOUT INTUITIVE RISK-TAKING,
AND SOME INNOVATORS HAVE
BASED ENTIRE CAREERS ON
TELLING THAT STORY.
IT’S A TRUISM THAT STORIES
DEPICTING THE SUCCESS OF
THE UNDERDOG DO WELL.
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7. We need to know not just how GE has
morphed from a product company into a data
company. We need to understand why GE
took the risky decision to completely disrupt
its own business model.
Equally, it’s not all that interesting to know
that Coca-Cola is redesigning its vending
machines to sell personalized drinks. The
story becomes engaging once we learn that
the drinks company is using the new vending
machines as a clever way to collect valuable
data on customer preferences in order to
inform new product design.
PART THREE
COMMUNICATING
IMPACT
AUDIENCES WILL
ENGAGE WITH THE
IMPACT OF YOUR
INNOVATION PROJECT,
BUT ONLY IF YOU
FIRST HELP THEM TO
UNDERSTAND WHAT
IT ADDS UP TO.
Almost every organisation
innovates, but only a few gain
a reputation for it. Why? On
its own the nature of innovation
isn’t enough. Innovation must
have a purpose. Too often
organisations rush to promote
fresh investment in an R&D
facility, the launch of a new
service, product or partnership,
without first considering why
it matters. Audiences need to
know why before they will care
about how.
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8. 1 THE WELLBEING OF MANKIND
Breakthrough innovation carries more weight
when the purpose is to improve the health and
happiness of the human race. This category
could include anything from sugar-free drinks
to neoprene socks.
2 TO SERVE THE COMMUNITY
Tangible benefits for a localized community
create a compelling reason for people to
care about your innovation project. Examples
might include a London fintech donating a
percentage of every transaction to support
electric car development in the Square Mile.
3 TO SERVE THE CUSTOMER
All innovation should have the customer at
heart. That said, there are some projects
where calling out customer-centricity is
worthwhile, for example employing design
thinking to re-engineer solutions around a
particular customer need, or a particular
customer insight that inspires a bold change
of direction.
4 DISRUPT THE MARKET
Disruption is the violation of accepted and
long-standing truths. Blockchain is disrupting
the notion that transactions require a
middleman. Uber disrupted the notion that
taxis must be licensed to be effective.
5 DISRUPT THE COMPANY
It’s more common for companies to be
disrupted by others than to disrupt it
themselves. Predictable revenues are
addictive, particularly for listed companies.
But the inherent tension in self-disruption
is also what makes the story so attractive.
Think Unilever, or GE.
6 SAVE THE INDUSTRY
Innovation serves the customer and it serves
the innovator. Occasionally it serves the whole
industry – particularly when it’s an industry
that needs saving. In banking, incumbents
are racing to innovate under heavy regulation.
Banks of all shapes and sizes are having to
decide when to imitate, when to partner and
when to lead, all under the constraints of
increasing regulation.
COMMUNICATING
IMPACT: SIX REASONS
TO CHANGE THE WORLD
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9. PART FOUR
A METHODOLOGY
How to tell an innovation story
that sells
An engaging innovation story
depends on three essential
elements. A basic storyline
(how is the innovation
achieved?); the trend or
cultural context that enables
your audiences to care; and
the reason why your innovation
matters – the impact you
hope to create. Here are four
examples that demonstrate
the formula.
METHOD + TREND + IMPACT
The journey: what if our
customers themselves
could be our main service
provider?
The gig economy Disrupt the market/
Serve the customer
Lyft matches people to
nearby drivers “so you can
get a ride in minutes”
Breakthrough idea:
keep the price of furniture
low by selling it in pieces
for the customer to
assemble at home
DIY Disrupt the market Ikea’s relentless
space-saving, cost-cutting
innovation rarely impacts
on design quality
The visionary genius:
Jeff Bezos has diversified
without risk of diluting
quality of service
E-commerce Serve the customer All Amazon innovation
supports the
customer experience
The journey: what if
global shipping could be
made cheaper, faster
and safer?
Globalisation Save the industry/
The wellbeing of mankind
A single, standardised
steel box, the shipping
container, changed
global trade forever
METHOD TREND IMPACT INNOVATION
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