BusinessTN

It’s Jan. 3, 2004, and tensions are running high at mission control. The scientists and engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, a non-government arm of NASA, collectively hold their breath waiting for the first radio signal from the robotic Mars rover.

After the space explorer enters the red planet’s atmosphere and lands on its ferrous surface, people jump to their feet and victoriously pump their fists overhead as the rover touches down safely, but then the signal is lost and knees buckle. Then, as contact is reestablished, everyone stands, and the cheering resumed.

Soon after, administrators at JPL had another problem. For a solution, they turned to Tennessee. But they weren’t looking to Oak Ridge or other scientific institutions in the Technology Corridor. Keenly aware that media reports to the general public had failed to convey the human drama that had unfolded that day, the officials instead came to Jonesborough, a small, storybook town near Johnson City.

Known as the state’s oldest town, Jonesborough is the epicenter of the storytelling world and home of the International Storytelling Center (ISC) founded by renowned storyteller Jimmy Neil Smith, who is credited with single-handedly bringing the storytelling art form into the mainstream.

What started 30 years ago with a few folk storytellers performing on a truck bed has grown into an international festival that hosts 30,000 visitors to the small town of 4,100 people and has an economic impact of about $6 million each year.

The art of storytelling is one of the oldest forms of communication, but one that the center has just begun promoting as a powerful business tool.

“Strategic planning can be done easily through telling our story of the future. What’s the story we’ll be telling 20 years from now? And, then, how do we transform our ‘now’ story into our ‘new’ story?” Smith asks.

Last year, the ISC partnered with the Harvard University Graduate School of Education and the Krispy Kreme Foundation on a paper explaining how storytelling, or story work, can lead to positive change. JPL wanted to change the public’s view of unmanned space exploration, a function of NASA that is less glamorous than space shuttle missions and the International Space Station.

Smith embarked on a project unlike any other and invited members of JPL’s education and outreach department to attend training sessions during the October 2002 festival. He educated the group on how stories can be used to communicate more effectively, regardless of the audience.

After further research on JPL’s storytelling mission, Smith commissioned another professional storyteller, former English teacher Syd Lieberman, to witness the historic rover landings first-hand, and to write and tell the story from the scientists’ and engineers’ point of view.

The idea of bringing a professional storyteller to the lab was a hard sell at first.

“Once people understood why I was there, they couldn’t stop talking about their work,” Lieberman says.

He had the rare opportunity to observe the crews’ reactions from inside mission control, while scores of reporters waited outside. Last summer, after two years of extensive interviewing and research, Lieberman debuted the story on his toughest audience—the people at JPL who lived it.

“There were people who had tears in their eyes. It was so moving, and they all came up to him afterward and said, ‘You were dead on.’ All the emotions came back up again,” says Stephanie Lear with JPL’s Mars Public Engagement department.

Now, the science-oriented minds at JPL are being trained at the festival and at home to tell their own stories of how they felt during these historic missions.

“We asked (ISC) to put together a learning lab that was specially designed for our engineers, scientists and writers, so we ourselves could gain some skills on how to tell stories,” Lear says.

Businesses and industry are just now realizing how powerful storytelling can be, according to Smith. And just as happened with JPL, it could all start with a trip to Jonesborough in October.