Innovation Storytelling Podcasts

Untold Content is a writing consultancy that’s dedicated to sharing the insights of thought leaders from different sectors, allowing them to streamline internal communication, increase the effectiveness of their advertising, improve proposals, and so much more. To learn more about how Untold Content accomplishes this, and what the consultancy’s new podcast will offer to its listeners, we spoke with CEO Katie Taylor.

Untold Content is launching a podcast series in March. What inspired you to do this?

Yes, I can't wait for the podcast to be launched! It's called Untold Stories of Innovation and each episode, we sit down with thought leaders from the world's most innovative organizations and companies. It's been an incredible journey so far. We've recorded a year's worth of podcasts in just the first quarter of 2020, and we've spoken with heads of innovation at Disney, NASA, John Deere, Argonne National Lab, PayPal, FM Global, The Honest Company, Procter and Gamble, Polaris, Ecolab, and dozens of others. We ask them why stories matter to the art of innovation.

We were inspired to do this because so many of the innovative clients that we work with express the pain that they feel in communicating what they do. Being able to sift through their data, highlight it in a more visual way, or talk about it as a story with context allows them to explain their insights in a way that doesn't confuse listeners. Instead, it empowers them and gives them the opportunity to really understand it.

It's incredible to us that so many innovation leaders within these podcast interviews are expressing that storytelling is everything. It's critical to culture-building, getting internal buy-in, and ensuring the right message is there before presenting it to the consumer.

What topics will the podcast focus on specifically?

In Untold Stories of Innovation, we're looking at different projects that these innovative companies are working on. We're looking at the culture, and the ways that they leverage storytelling and sharing to build upon it.

We also talk about failure, success, and how to talk about those topics. It's not just saying "We need to talk about failure more," but actually saying, "How do you talk about failure? How do you make people more comfortable with failure? How has that sped up your rate of innovation, and the confidence of your innovators?" We talk about why it's so challenging for scientists, designers, and engineers to communicate their evidence and data effectively. The podcast provides a lot of helpful strategies, and shows how our interviewees have used storytelling to grow. .

We talk a lot about creativity, passion, and the different cultural elements that storytelling can help reinforce inside of an innovative organization. It's a weekly dose of insight that can help you communicate your innovation more effectively.

What do you hope your audience gains from listening in?

I hope that they feel more creative, and have more confidence to share their great ideas. We hope that they have fewer moments of banging their head against the wall, and wondering if an idea was turned down because they didn't communicate it well enough. I hope they feel inspired.

We've had the chance to speak to so many amazing innovators through this series, and just being able to sit down with them for 45 minutes and hear about the lessons they've learned throughout their careers has been so impactful. It's probably the best way you could spend your commute. Whether you're a start-up founder, an ecosystem builder who's leading a whole region and its innovation strategy, or even at the enterprise level and have to look at innovation on a global scale, it's applicable across all different positions.

What unites all of us is a passion for change -- for making, breaking, and disrupting. Every week you're going to walk away feeling inspired to come back to the drawing board, and to be experimental with how you tell and communicate your innovative work.

Where do you hope to take the series?

We're hopeful that the innovation community listens in, shares it with others, and that it becomes an important part of their weekly self-improvement and professional-development routine.

We have been very intentional about being diverse in who we bring onto the podcast in order to be as inclusive as possible. We're spotlighting many different voices -- people who are venture capitalists, start-up mentors and founders, and people who are innovation consultants.

We have this beautiful breadth and depth of knowledge on the podcast. So, a long-term goal is to have anyone who cares about innovation and change listen in. Then, by the end 2020, to be able to have another season of this, do it all again, and talk to even more innovators. We're already having to turn people down at this point because we've recorded so many episodes. I'm really excited to see what that feedback is as more people listen in.

How can listeners access the podcast, and when can they expect new episodes to come out?

Episodes will come out weekly on Mondays, and listeners can access it on iTunes, and any other place where they listen to podcasts. You can also go to our website at UntoldContent.com/podcast, where you'll see every episode listed. You can also follow #UntoldInnovation on any social media platform to engage in the conversation.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what led you to launch Untold Content?

By nature and through my training, I’m a storyteller. Untold Content was born out of the need that I saw in science, tech, medicine and social innovation sectors for more impactful storytelling.

Before starting my company, I was a research professor at a large university, where I had a research agenda. Most of my work focused on technical communication, technical writing, and how technical disciplines can better communicate, write, and tell their stories. As I taught on those subjects and researched them, I saw that there’s a massive need for that type of support inside these industries.

I started consulting in technical communication and innovative storytelling, and eventually Untold Content was born. We define innovation storytelling as the art of communicating new product developments, disruptive technologies, incremental innovations, and thought-leading insights.

We consider this work to be really important, especially for subject matter experts in science, tech, medicine, and social innovation. In these fields, the likelihood of their work seeing support really depends on their ability to interpret their data, research, and methodologies -- and communicate it in a way that stakeholders can get behind.

What services does Untold Content offer?

We offer two different types of services: immersive, hands-on content creation services for our clients, and training experiences. In our training experiences, we empower our clients' teams to tell their stories more effectively, write better, and communicate with more impact. Ultimately, our goal is to empower innovative organizations to communicate their insights in more clear and compelling ways.

We do everything from research reports, trend analyses, white papers, and even peer-reviewed publications. That's a big part of what we do, since everyone on our team has a PhD degree, either in writing, or in a scientific discipline. We support organizations in validating their methodologies, and amplify the impact of their thought leadership.

One of my favorite training experiences that we offer is called Innovation Storytelling Training. Inside the Innovation Storytelling Training experience, participants from innovation teams, marketing, and sales, join us to learn from 25 examples of great innovation stories. They learn about five key drivers of innovation storytelling. Then, they bring a current project or prototype to the workshop, and start by presenting it. Throughout the day, they receive feedback that helps them to rework their idea so that they can get a pitch that’s much more refined. When they present it again at the end of the day, they see a huge improvement. Through this, our clients see a lasting impact in their confidence and their ability to storytell. As a result, they’re more effective in communicating their innovative work, and it allows them to collaborate with their team in a way that’s much more seamless.

Are there any other ways that clients benefit from Untold Content's services?

Our services allow our clients to really leverage the insights of their experts, and not let them get lost at the lab bench, or be muddled by technical jargon. This makes it easier for marketing, sales, operations, and leadership to understand the insights, and at the same time, equips everyone in the organization with a better grasp of innovative thinking.

Whether that's incremental innovation or disruptive, you can think in innovative ways that can help shift the culture of your entire organization. More than ever, consumers want to purchase from companies that they see as innovative. If you're able to leverage all of the advice across your organization and communicate it effectively, you have an increased chance of actually being a truly innovative organization.