How's your storytelling? In this podcast, Harvard professor & author Jerry Zaltman shares his expertise on what makes for great storytelling, the power of metaphors, and how, in addition to reading, writing and talking (yes!) can also be powerful modes of discovery.

 

References & Links

Professor Gerald Zaltman 

* Email – [email protected]

* HBS website – https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=6579

* Olson Zaltman website - http://olsonzaltman.com/

* AMA Lifetime Achievement Award - https://www.ama.org/awards-consumer-behavior-sig/

* Z-files blog - http://olsonzaltman.com/zfiles

* “How Customers Think” book – https://amzn.to/2CbdB1n

* “Marketing Metaphoria” book - https://amzn.to/2SIJ7cA 

“Unlocked: Keys to Improve Your Thinking” Book & Donation Program

* Book: “Unlocked” - https://amzn.to/2JVnCpk

* Book-matching donation program details - https://www.geraldzaltman.com/makeadifference

* Email Jerry regarding the book-matching donation program -[email protected]

Stories and Storytelling

* Metaphors -  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphor

* Memes - https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/what-is-a-meme-examples/

* Japanese film “Rashomon” (1950) - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042876/

Talk About Talk

* Newsletter Sign-up: https://talkabouttalk.com/#newsletter-signup

* Website: https://talkabouttalk.com

* Andrea: [email protected]

 

Interview Transcript

AW: Let's get into it. So I know that you've written over 20 books. I think it's 23. Is that right?

JZ: That sounds about right.

AW:  Okay. So you've covered some themes in your books, such as consumer research, metaphors, consumer psychology, but your most recent book entitled, “Unlocked: keys to improve your thinking,” is a little bit different, right? Maybe you can start by telling us a little bit about the book and why you wrote it.

JZ: Okay. It didn't start out as a book per se. I didn't plan to write this book. The way it began is about two, three years ago, I began to worry a lot about the information world that my grandkids were growing up in. A world that we now call fake news or a period of truth decay. Especially a period of time where opinion seems to determine fact, what we accept as a fact, as opposed to a fact determining what our opinions might be. And as I thought about that problem for them, and began writing little exercises, to sensitize them to the problem in conversation, I began to appreciate more and more that so much of our attention in daily life goes to WHAT we think in comparison, we give relatively little attention to HOW we think - to various complex and often hidden forces that determine what it is we think. And I have some explanations for that. But I was concerned increasingly that these young adults were not being instructed much in terms of how they think. They would be given things to think about, but not the all-important factor of how they get there,