As flagged previously, Anecdote, Innotecture and Sparknow are running Story Week commencing on Monday 4th May. Story week aims to explore how to identify stories that have impact and the consistency (if any) with which people rate the impact of stories.

This is of interest for a range of reasons. Firstly, our Narrative Insight process involves collection of large numbers of stories – too many to be used in workshop settings – and we often need to identify the ones that have most impact. Story week will help us understand more about the selection criteria we use and the extent to which they are useful.

Of more relevance to our readers is the second reason. Anyone who gives presentations and talks, writes articles, reports, blog posts etc, can use stories to help communicate more clearly, persuasively and memorably. The stories can come from your own experience, from history, movies or the experience of others. A key challenge is choosing the right stories; the ones that have most impact and are most relevant. We are hoping that Story Week will inform our work to make the selection of the right stories more robust.

Starting Monday, we will post one story per day, seeking as many people as possible to assess the story against the criteria. It will only take a few moments each day.

Get ready!