Lesson | Intro to Storytelling

Storytelling is a ‘weird beast’: it is at the very same time the most discussed topic today, and the one that seems to define whatever happens, from the success of a toilet paper brand to the failure of a political candidate. The confusion grows as more and more claim competences that are based on very shaky foundations.

Storytelling is the ability to take data and connect them in a memorable and impressive manner. It is, for many, the prevalence of form over substance.  Yet, for Umberto Eco, storytelling is “what defines the human being” as “the human being is a storytelling animal by nature” as he claims in the critical analysis of his masterpiece The name of the rose.

I tend to agree with him, and even more in a culture that has communication, and hence storytelling, at its core, 24/7. In other words, to me, storytelling is what we do all day long, all the time, and I am dedicated to research and develop ways to combine form with content to make more than than sum of the two. To me, storytelling is making 1+1=3.