Idea Stories

The History of Storytelling

The story is a powerful tool. We tell stories to understand ourselves better. By exploring our inner selves through words and stories, we come to understand the “real” us that lives inside our bodies. The earliest forms of stories were past down orally, guided with gestures and expressions. To help the storyteller convey their message, cave paintings were formed, music developed, and dance discovered. The story itself would become a defining aspect of the culture due to its ability to survive after the storyteller’s death.

While the method by which we tell stories has changed, their importance to us has not. We live in a world with an unrelated information overload. While data, facts, statistics, and definitive answers to specific questions are immediately available from search engines on the internet. Many people need more than just facts to make a proper analysis; they need an understanding. They need a contextual meaning. They need a rational structure for comprehension. They want everything which a story inherently provides.

An idea story, allows the integration of a PRIZM game session into a narrative, which allows the participants to organize the new individual ideas into a structured format, which can be easily understood by the target audience. As you move through the PRIZM game, you selectively improve/optimize system elements with new ideas, which can move toward system ideality. In the context of the PRIZM game, we ultimately would never implement a new idea that would decrease a system's performance, functionality, or beneficial characteristics. While other idea collection processes rely on a disjointed/unconnected idea formulation process. The PRIZM game synthesizes idea components into this holistic solution record.

How do you tell an idea story?

Here are some simple criteria that every idea story must contain.

The Who - Introduce the characters, the people (resources) who are affected, or affect the solution record. Stories involve people so it is vital to describe them, and their roles within the idea story. There also needs to be an owner of the ideas, someone who is passionate enough about them to claim them, and who is persistent and rigorous enough to direct the idea story through the proper channels.

The What – Explain what happens next, or how the situation is resolved. some of the greatest advances in history have been “Eureka!” moments, points of brief spontaneous epiphany, where the thinker, or team has realized the solution to their problem just by looking at it from a new angle. As well, some of the greatest disasters in our history have been simple oversights (the titanic, the Hindenburg). It is therefore very important to include all of the details of the idea and process into the narrative.

The Where - Set the scene, it is important to illustrate the time and place. What are the features of the location? This often involves the challenges or difficulties that must be overcome. Your ideas could meet with many types of resistance, and understanding the forces that are intending to work against it will be critical for it to find success. The clarity of understanding and explaining the elements of the idea story are critical. One must articulate the entire spectrum of being, like in water it's possible for it to exist as a liquid, a solid, or a vapor, depending on the temperature of the environment. The cost, schedule, and resources of the business can all subvert an otherwise brilliant plan.

Example Idea Solutions

If the process is followed, the PRIZM game will output 3 separate idea stories. The following sample was created at a 2010 session in Bakersfield California with a sustainability “Quest” of how to co-exist with the endangered Kit Fox:

Cheap Story (easy to implement) – Create a “pilot” program to use recycled junk cars as material to build kit fox ‘Super’ dens. Provide the kit fox population with a well balanced and recycled food supply. If the program is a successful we will implement in other areas and advertise our success.

Simple Story (not complex) – Create a den community protected by fenced areas and provide a balanced kit fox “chow” that will be relocated regularly to promote kit fox hunting skills.

Beautiful Story (novel and unique) - Create kit fox community islands surrounded by water barriers and create inter-island connections via the kit fox super highway and Modify city regulations to suspend the endangered species act within the city limits allowing residents to drop off unwanted rodents for recycling.