Meaningful: The Story of Ideas That Fly

What companies and entrepreneurs sometimes forget is that the purpose of innovation is not simply to make new, improved products and services; it is to make things that are meaningful to the people who use them.

As I worked with clients, I kept hitting on this same problem over and over again. They were working hard to bring ideas to market and enlisting my help with the storytelling part after the idea was fully formed; their first focus was almost completely on the idea itself when it should have been on the prospective user or customer. In fact, it woul

The two most important things we can do are to allow ourselves to be seen AND to really see others. The greatest gift you can give a person is to see who she is and to reflect that back to her. When we help people to be who they want to be, to take back some of the permission they deny themselves, we are doing our best, most meaningful work.

Marketing has gone from this… It turns out that affinity that is earned, not attention that is bought and paid for, is what’s powering business growth now.

Early on in the process, we are so focused on ideation and creation that we forget to think about the story we will ask the customer to believe when the product launches, and so we miss an opportunity to make the product or service better.

There’s a reason the IKEA catalogue comes in sixty-seven versions and thirty-two languages: the company knows that their products are worthless if they don’t fit the context in which customers will use them.

When everything you do is framed by the question ‘Is this product or service worthy of my customer and why?’ it changes everything.

We are prepared to trade privacy for significance. But we still want to choose the things we pay attention to and the stories we believe.

size or legacy, faces four massive challenges. They are: Clutter Competition Commoditisation Consumer consciousness Faced with unlimited choices, savvy customers are becoming more discerning, and more companies are lining up to respond to their wants and needs.