Jeanine,
Seth Godin talks about marketing as storytelling (see http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/04/ode_how_to_tell.html). How does this relate to the kind of storytelling you're talking about? It also resonates with medical ethics expert Howard Brody's work in placebo research--and empowering patients to heal themselves through the stories they tell about the meaning of their illness (http://tinyurl.com/h8c6s). I'd love to see some kind of meta-theme to tie this all together. Or am I asking for too much?
Morty

One thing I like about Seth, perhaps what I like best, is that he focuses on "true". That which is true drives us. What does true mean? According to google (define: true) true means:

**consistent with fact or reality; not false; "the story is true"; "it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true"- B. Russell; "the true meaning of the statement"
**conforming to definitive criteria; "the horseshoe crab is not a true crab"; "Pythagoras was the first true mathematician"
**accurately placed or thrown; "his aim was true"; "he was dead on target"
**dependable: worthy of being depended on; "a dependable worker"; "an honest working stiff"; "a reliable source of information"; "he was true to his word"; "I would be true for there are those who trust me"
**genuine: not pretended; sincerely felt or expressed; "genuine emotion"; "her interest in people was unfeigned"; "true grief"

To me, this is what knowledge driven storytelling is all about. Much like one learns in branding 101, you are "branding yourself" with the information you put out there. It's incumbent on you, then, to ensure that it's the best representation of yourself, your work and your experiences. Going back to the idea of discovering fire, nobody had any vested interest in lying about how to start a fire - either you can do it, or you can't and each time someone tried something new, they might have gotten closer or failed miserably. Each story, however, built upon the next.

I have not read Brody's work, but I have read the writings of a few Columbia and Harvard medical school professors who subscribe to story as a healing device. If we consider that most major religions rely on story for propagation and many rely on the idea of miracle or miraculousness, unusual or fundamentally "feelable" and relateable parable to seed the idea of something bigger than us, these doctors are making a logical leap that story is a profoundly healing, moving, and impactful device. Especially the story of "me" and "us".

I suppose this is a common theme in everything that humans touch, from the sublime to the horrible. Why then is it so difficult to translate to business in a moving, compelling way? There are moments that I feel that what we are doing is simply silly, but then someone tells us a story of how it has helped them win a project or develop something completely innovative, or get their next job and it becomes worth it. But again, the stories drive us to do more.

As far as meta-theming this stuff together, I'll give it the old college try, but I might fail miserably at it - which is not entirely a bad thing, I suppose.