Recently, full-time MBA students at Imperial College Business School earned a special treat. They attended a unique, storytelling workshop led by Charles Andrew and Alexis Scobie of Idea Couture—a global strategic innovation and experience design firm. Focused on storytelling techniques in business, the workshop was held as part of the Design Thinking and Innovative Problem Solving core module.
Students in the workshop were shown a different side of business, that of storytelling. Mainly, they were given a glance into how storytelling is used throughout business dealings to evoke emotion and enhance company performance. In particular, the workshop delved into how Idea Couture uses storytelling.
The workshop started simply. Students were shown a 1949 movie that had no narrative just a series of moving triangles. At the end of the movie, the leaders asked students to share their reactions. Unsurprisingly, there were a variety of different responses. Some students saw characters within the triangles while others experience emotions such as joy or sadness.
Andrew explained the results this way. “Humans are wired for stories even when there isn’t one,” Charles explained in an Imperial College blog. “Storytelling skills help us to think about what’s happening in the mind of the audience and to create an excited reaction. Storytelling is a really important skill that underlies an array of business skills including pitching, leadership and audience engagement, even though it isn’t often thought of as a business tool”
Throughout the workshop, Andrew and Scobie went on to talk about how Forbes highlighted storytelling as a valid business tool, and even how Apple used it in 2001 to introduce the company’s transition to the cloud. Steve Jobs knew that his iCloud service would be met with skepticism, so he pitched it as the “Year of the Cloud” and used challenges and solutions to win over skeptics.
Beyond a lecture, the workshop also included a group project. All full-time MBA students were split into teams and asked to plan and pitch a fictional product using storytelling. Through this group project, students explored storytelling methods, discovered how humor drives emotional engagement and learned how storytelling could be used to achieve various business goals.
“I’ve never practiced storytelling before, and I found the workshop really useful,” full-time MBA student Suzy Kerton said. “I have an accountancy firm and it’s helped me to start to think about how to interact with clients.”