Your favorite book, the magazine sitting by your briefcase, and the blog you read each morning each have something in common – they’re interesting, they tell a story, and they’re read. Unfortunately, as researchers, we sometimes get lost in numbers and information, and forget that resonance and impact depends on readability and interest.
So how can we take the mass of information successfully collected on a topic and turn it into a coherent story? By thinking openly, and letting creative juices flow:
In a recent Southern Business Journal article, Visualize your Business, the author lays out a strategy for infusing creativity into the business by “going back to kindergarten” – using crayons, markers, and big sheets of paper to visualize ideas. Grey suggests a quick easy process for making connections:
- Identify the topic or issue
- Draw a picture that represents that topic on the center of a page
- Draw any images related to the topic around the image
- Highlight keywords
- Illustrate connections
There are other ways age-appropriate ways to find and see connections and develop story flow in a pile of information. In Increasing the Effectiveness of Synthesis Efforts, the Market Research Executive Board describes how some researchers are aided by:
- Online brainstorming programs
- Mind Mapping
- Movable sticky notes
Once ideas are on paper, it’s fairly easy to draft narrative and end up with a product that will make it to the top of the company reading list.
on August 24, 2011
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[...] good marketing plan starts with a great product. So start with a compelling topic and a readable narrative. After that – as the big guys in Hollywood would say – the show really [...]
on October 20, 2011
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[...] Connecting the Dots—Using Kindergarten Tools to Build Narrative Synthesis [...]