Storycraft: The Importance of Narrative and Narrative Skills in Business

Narrative skills are fundamental and indispensable in business in the twenty-first century. The ability to devise, craft, and deliver a successful narrative is not only a pre-requisite for any Chief Executive Officer (CEO) or senior executive, but is also increasingly becoming necessary for employees in any organisation. This ground-breaking report reveals how prominent business leaders in the United Kingdom view and utilise narrative as an integral part of doing business. Based on extensive interviews with 34 business leaders, most of whom are CEOs and Chairs of Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 Index (FTSE100) companies, the study fills a gap in extant scholarship on narrative in a business context, an area that is both under-researched and under-theorised. In addition, the report updates and revitalises the idea of what narrative constitutes. Much academic discourse on narrative emanates from literary theory, which in turn focuses mostly on literary texts, predominantly the novel. Yet this kind of academic discourse ignores how narrative operates in the real world, and especially in the commercial world. By contrast, this project employs rigorous, empirical research in order to understand how business leaders conceptualise and deploy narrative in the twenty-first century, and to understand the complex skills now required for a business narrative to succeed. [This report was funded by the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Arts and Humanities Research Council. For the Summary Version, see ED614538.]