Wolfgang Hammer

And with storytelling especially, but I even think, maybe this is confirmation bias, but I even think in business or in innovation,

The new is really just the obvious uncovered through systematic trial and error over a certain period of time.

So that by striving to stay within the obvious and trying to find a variation on the obvious, I think you have a higher chance, at least in storytelling, of discovering something novel that will still feel intelligible enough to categorize in the world.

Some people have an ability to see something truly new and immediately categorize it.

Those people tend to be very successful investors, for instance.

But generally speaking, I think the idea of original is overrated and the great filmmakers know this.

The great novelists know this, that you can begin with something very familiar and make it feel totally new incrementally.

It was a project where simply there's a camera installed in the room and the camera would move back and forth across the room and each time uncover a little bit more of the room and nothing else happens.

There's no payoff to it.

But the suspense of seeing a little bit more information about the room is absolutely riveting.

Even just this tiny amount of new information being given creates enormous suspense because somehow we're good at anticipating.

We're really always anticipating.

And each new piece of information gets put into some kind of puzzle.

So by the end, the suspense is unbearable.

The reason storytelling to me is so effective is because you have a subjective point of view that an individual can relate to because it's imitating and processing the character's point of view.

So it's subjective in that way.

The subjective access to storytelling would be a universal truth, but that can be only accessed subjectively.

I think that's exactly right.

Someone called me, hadn't heard from them in a while, and they said, we realized we've been selling to the wrong level.

We have to sell to C-level as opposed to frontline manager level.