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"kaleidoscope thinking," a mental process of shaking up the pieces and reassembling them to form a new pattern, the way a kaleidoscope creates endless patterns. This metaphor suggests that reality is not necessarily fixed. The stories we tell ourselves — our cultural assumptions — are the limiting factor.

Narratives should be rewritten when they inhibit rather than inspire. Individuals and institutions can get bogged down by narratives that suggest inevitability — "it has always been this way, it was meant to be this way, and it couldn't possibly change."

Even in companies doing well, narratives prevent change if the stories are ones of destiny, and eventually entitlement

Here’s the problem with interactivity: There’s no evidence people actually want it in their stories. No one watches Mad Men or reads Gone Girl yearning for control of the story as it unfolds. Interaction is precisely what most of us don’t want during story time. The more we interact with a story, the more we have to maintain the alertness of the mind operating in the real world. We can’t achieve the dreamy trance that constitutes so much of the joy of story--and the power. And the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that Finnegan’s Wake, for all its splendor as a kind of impressionistic word painting, repels readers because of its interactivity. Most critics think that Joyce was trying to get away from what he called “wideawake language” to re-create the chaos of dreaming life. Paradoxically, however, the sheer difficulty of Finnegan’s Wake forces readers to maintain a “wideawake” frame of mind as they attempt to puzzle their way through. They can’t slip into the waking dream of story time.

Story resists reinvention. As the example of Finnegan’s Wake shows, storytelling is not something that can be endlessly rejiggered and reengineered. Story is like a circle. A circle is a circle. The minute you start fussing with the line you create a non-circle. Similarly, story only works inside narrow bounds of possibility. Imagine narrative transportation as this powerful brain capacity that is protected by a lock. The lock can only be opened with a specific combination. For as long as there have been humans, the ways of undoing the lock have been passed down through generations of storytellers. Going back to the earliest forms of oral folktales and moving forward through stage plays, to printed novels, and modern YouTube shorts, the fundamentals of successful storytelling have not changed at all.

When it comes to the fundamentals of story, there is not now--and never will be--anything new under the sun.

According to a massive body of psychological research, a powerful phenomenon called the "mere exposure effect" compels people to develop a preference for specific content simply because they are familiar with it. In social psychology, it’s called the "familiarity principle." We are all drawn innately toward that which we recognize. It makes sense that we would prefer stories that are architecturally similar to other stories we’ve heard in the past.

An intrinsically human narrative, the Slaying the Dragon strategy is the platform for many of humankind’s most celebrated stories. From Beowulf to Jaws, the American Revolution to the Arab Spring, this is the story of the hero (for most marketing content, this is the product or brand) who ventures bravely forth to selflessly slay the dragon in order to protect those the hero loves (for marketing, the consumer).

"The dominant narrative about the use of drones in Pakistan is of a surgically precise and effective tool that makes the US safer by enabling 'targeted killings' of terrorists, with minimal downsides or collateral impacts. This narrative is false," the report, entitled Living Under Drones, states.

The "best available information", they say, is that between 2,562 and 3,325 people have been killed in Pakistan between June 2004 and mid-September this year – of whom between 474 and 881 were civilians, including 176 children. The figures have been assembled by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which estimated that a further 1,300 individuals were injured in drone strikes over that period.

US drones hover 24 hours a day over communities in north-west Pakistan, striking homes, vehicles, and public spaces without warning," the American law schools report says

More recently, a different approach to content development has come to the fore. The old emphasis on producing carefully framed messages has given way to a more fluid and variegated style of communication, and the campaign mentality has yielded to a preference for collaboration. Most important, employees are becoming an integral player in that collaborative enterprise.

Conversational inclusion starts, quite simply, with a resolve to include employees in the real, nitty-gritty work of gathering and sharing company information. It means drawing them over to the active, constructive side of the communication process.

Smart leaders, accordingly, open up institutional space where people from all parts of a company can participate in creating and telling the company story. In that space, employees should be able to contribute to both message development and message delivery.

Why "two-way conversation"? This buzzword-y phrase is a way to distinguish the strategy from the equally buzzword-y phrase "one-way conversation" (sometimes referred to as one-way manipulation), in which a brand dominates the conversation or outputs information without really engaging. Two-way conversation, then, is a strategy that a brand uses to exude a human quality, showing (or pretending to show) that they care about what you have to say. Instead of broadcasting, they're engaging.

If you're speaking with a friend who has nothing valuable to contribute to the conversation, it's not really a successful conversation, is it? The same goes for brands.

when a user comes across your Twitter handle or Facebook feed, she doesn't suddenly transform into a "professional-only" mode that consumes, filters and reacts to content based 100% on her company and career. No, her professional persona may take center stage, but her entire thought process is also influenced by the less apparent parts of her personality: the fact that she's a parent, enjoys rock climbing, is coming off a rough week or lives in a city. As marketers, we need to embrace this fundamental nature of user behavior; namely, that people act, engage, and respond not solely as professionals, but as nuanced human beings.

If connection needs to take place at a human level, then our brands must also become human

Being a humanized brand means learning the art of authenticity. It means being genuine, being passionate about whatever it is your brand is and does. Just like in everyday life, people respond most to others who are perceptibly and consistently real. And that's why it's an art, not a formula. Authenticity, in the long run, can't be manufactured or faked.

"There’s you, the person, and you have your full identity in yourself," he says. "But you know contextually when to wear certain things. You might wear one thing to a funeral, you might wear one thing for a Saturday night. You understand those contexts. And those never change your identity, so to speak, but they do start to communicate some kind of intent. And that’s what we’re trying to figure out right now. How do you create some kind of contextual mirror to create intent."

"Monolithic solutions are a necessity of yesterday, because of the permanence and cost of communication," Hendrix wrote in his opening remarks for the project. "Now we’re in an ephemeral and affordable age, and mass distribution at low cost is possible thanks to the digital revolution."

"The digital revolution let us make more complex identity systems, but what’s the point?," he says. "At some point, you start asking, 'why do I need 10,000 configurations of a mark? What’s it really saying to me?"

the ability to articulate your story or that of your company is crucial in almost every phase of enterprise management. It works all along the business food chain: A great salesperson knows how to tell a story in which the product is the hero. A successful line manager can rally the team to extraordinary efforts through a story that shows how short-term sacrifice leads to long-term success. An effective CEO uses an emotional narrative about the company’s mission to attract investors and partners, to set lofty goals, and to inspire employees.

Storytelling plays a similar role today. It is one of the world’s most powerful tools for achieving astonishing results

a force for turning dreams into goals and then into results

Authenticity, as noted above, is a crucial quality of the storyteller. He must be congruent with his story—his tongue, feet, and wallet must move in the same direction

A great man is one sentence. ~ Clare Boothe Luce

To make the soup more flavorful, you don’t add more spices to it. Instead, you boil the excess water. That’s what you have to do. Not add new elements, simply subtract boring ones.

People will only remember you for one thing. If you try to force them to remember multiple facets, you’ll never make room for yourself in their brain (or heart). But what if you have more than one thing to talk about? What if you solve more than one problem? If you solve more than one problem, you’ve got to do what Apple does. Apple sells more than 30 products in varying product categories. Macbooks and iPods and iPhones and iPads. But they unify all their products under one element: the undeniable user interface. Apple does not sell computers and mp3 players and phones and tablets. They sell gadgets with an undeniable user interface.