Storytelling in research

Kim Goodwin on Storytelling in Research, IIT Design Research Conference, 2009 from IIT Institute of Design on Vimeo.

Thanks to storytellin for this link.

"Find good people and set them free." Richard Branson

I stumbled upon these words by Richard Branson while reading through Roger Neil's blog and was immediately blown away. I just stayed there looking at the screen and could not imagine for a better way to put in seven words what organisational leadership is about.

I have worked for numerous organisations - some much better than others - throughout the years and I have some less extensive experience in leadership. What I know in my heart and mind is that the best organisations I have ever worked for were those in which Richard Branson's maxim applied. Unfortunately, in the majority of them this unique culture was just a temporary blip that did not sustain for long reverting back to the bureaucratic inertia. In spite of that, the feeling that I have had been a part of something special lingered on. It is a precious memory to consider oneself as an important part of a crucial development in the organisation.

"Find good people and set them free". I was so impressed by the genius simplicity of this 7-word summary of leadership that I could not pass the temptation to post it here - in spite of the fact that it is not strictly speaking a story.

But then, what is a story and how do stories work? The potential impact of the story is realised only when the audience jointly contribute to its meaning tapping into their well of experience, drawing it onto their internal maps of how the world works.

That was exactly my revelation in Branson's words: suddenly, something lingering at the periphery of my consciousness became explicit in a simple and beautiful way.

Dr. Fred Craddock on Storytelling in Sermons

Fox, grapes and psychoanalysis

One hot summer's day a Fox was strolling through an orchard till he came to a bunch of Grapes just ripening on a vine which had been trained over a lofty branch. "Just the thing to quench my thirst," quoth he. Drawing back a few paces, he took a run and a jump, and just missed the bunch. Turning round again with a One, Two, Three, he jumped up, but with no greater success. Again and again he tried after the tempting morsel, but at last had to give it up, and walked away with his nose in the air, saying: "I am sure they are sour."

An Aesop Fable, available here

This is one of my all-time favourite fables and the reason is my old love in psychoanalysis. I am yet to see a critic of psychoanalysis who is able to deny the universal truth of self-deception in this simple story. Yet a critic might say, "Does the Fox really believe that the grapes are sour?" I say yes, he does because he has self-respect, doesn't he?

Stories of accidental scientific discoveries

“I had dissected and prepared a frog in the usual way and while I was attending to something else I laid it on a table on which stood an electrical machine at some distance from its conductor and separated from it by a considerable space. Now when one of the persons present touched accidentally and lightly the inner crural nerves of the frog with the point of a scalpel, all the muscles of the legs seemed to contract again and again as if they were affected by powerful cramps.”

How many of us have not been told this famous story at school? The quote here describing this early advance in bioelectricity is from Luigi Galvani himself.

This story reminds me of another one about Alexander Fleming who discovered penicillin 'by chance' when forgetting dirty culture dishes before going on a long holiday or about Albert Hofmann and the psychedelic properties of LSD.

Here are a couple more from "The Top 10 Accidental Discoveries" posted by Listverse.com:

Microwave: Percy LeBaron Spencer of the Raytheon Company was walking past a radar tube and he noticed that the chocolate bar in his pocket melted. Realizing that he might be on to a hot new product he placed a small bowl of popcorn in front of the tube and it quickly popped all over the room.

Potato chips: The first potato chip was invented by George Crum (half American Indian half African American) at Moon’s Lake House near Saratoga Springs, New York, on August 24, 1853. He was fed up with the constant complaints of a customer who kept sending his potatoes back to the kitchen because they were too thick and soggy. Crum decided to slice the potatoes so thin that they couldn’t be eaten with a fork. Against Crum’s expectation, the customer was ecstatic about the new chips. They became a regular item on the lodge’s menu under the name “Saratoga Chips”...

And of course, it is only fair to finish with the two most famous of them all, the story of Isaac Newton and the apple, and of course the one of Archimedes and the bathtub :)

Why does the accidental discovery plays such a significant role in the stories of scientific endeavour? A psychoanalyst might explain it with the creativity of the unconscious sneaking under the sleeping / tired mind, just like a Freudian slip of the tongue.

But this is not what I am interested in. My question is, why do these stories stay imprinted in our minds from the science lessons at school? Why have these inspired so many inquisitive minds?

In the more elaborate versions of some of these stories, the accidental discovery happens after a long period of the protagonist being 'stuck' and starting to doubt the prospects of his endeavour. Then the reward comes suddenly, when you least expect it... I think the unexpected (deserved) reward is a big element of these stories. The cause-effect link between effort and compensation seems broken but the reward is far, far from accidental. In most of these stories the protagonists have committed their lives to the scientific work.

As Louis Pasteur puts it, "In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind."

If there was a cause-effect relation between effort-compensation, where would the inspiration of these stories go?