Brigham Young University
by Nile Hatch
In entrepreneurial innovation, storytelling is not a peripheral flourish—it is central to how value is understood, tested, and delivered. This presentation explores how experience-based storytelling drives the innovation process, from ethnographic research to value proposition design. Drawing on tools like personas, experience maps, smoke tests, and even statistical analysis, we show how each method functions as a form of narrative: a way to relay, interpret, and respond to a customer’s lived experience. Empathy allows innovators to translate fragmented observations into coherent stories that guide strategic decision-making. By reframing even our brainstorming language—such as replacing “How might we?” with questions rooted in experience—we can reorient innovation around the stories people are actually living. This talk bridges the humanities and entrepreneurial management by arguing that storytelling is not only a means of communication but the cognitive mechanism through which meaningful innovation occurs.