Our Chief Storyteller, Tony Quinlan, spoke on Monday 27th January 2020 at the Helsinki workshop on managing innovation portolios. Covering Cynefin, complexity and the principles of working in complexity, he also talked about using ethnography (micro-narrative techniques in particular) to understand the invisible landscape, stimulate innovation design and monitor the impact of multiple projects.

His slides from the conference are downloadable here:

For details of why stories and micro-narratives from the field are better self-interpreted rather than either expert-interpreted or algorithm-analysed, there are two more detailed posts here and here.

Curious about micro-narrative research or SenseMaker?

Book a confidential conversation

If you’d rather have a confidential conversation to explore whether it would be appropriate or useful in your work, Tony has freed up a day for conversations – feel free to book a time for an online conversation with him.

You can see what times are available and book a conversation here.

Other NGO experiences

An article here also has links to a variety of pieces written by UNDP micro-narrative research users, including projects throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia around prejudice, peace and reconciliation, disability rights, Roma discrimination and the Greenb Economy. And this article here contains a full case study written up by Kecia Bertermann and Rebecca Smith of GirlEffect on their experiences with SenseMaker®.