Jennifer Aaker: The Power of Story

0:04 First of all welcome back. It's so exciting to see so many familiar faces. Many of you don't look different at all in the last five years, so you look fantastic. Let me just say that. I also wanted to give you kind of a road map of what we're going to do. I'm going to talk a little bit about why I'm happy to be here right now. Friday night with you guys without alcohol, but I know it's outside and luring you.

0:34 So, I'm going to try and make sure that this is sort of spiced up. Then I'm going to talk a little bit about the power of story in two regards. The first is as an asset, strategically for business. Raise your hands if you've founded your own company or are working sort of at your own company in some way, shape, or form, so that's like I don't know 25% of the people. And how many of you have been at a company that you started with right when you finished the GSV?

1:07 Raise your hands. That's about 20%. So, I'm going to be asking both of you groups of people a set of questions about sort of thinking about story as a strategic asset. Then I'm going to turn to this idea of story as life, this idea that story may be better than anything else in our life both captures meaning and creates meaning. So, and then I'm going to talk a little bit about what I hope you do on Monday.

1:38 So first of all, before I dive in, I wanted to lay out a framework of some recent research that I've done with Seth Cumber and Cassie Mogilner, and this is based off of a data set called We Feel Fine, which Seth Cumber and Jonathan Harris pulled together. And the way to read this simple slide is, which is, by the way, essentially a summary of over 10,000 data points over three years time over, across cultures, and it's blog based data where Seth and Jonathan scrape the blogosphere for all mentions of.

2:19 I feel and I am feeling. And then they can co-vary what people are feeling, and what they're saying, doing, feeling, etc, when they're talking about certain emotions. Because blog based data has demographics associated with it. You can then start to better understand sort of the emotional lexicon of our lives. So the way to read this slide is we start out simple, this is your 11 to 14 year old son, daughter, nephew, niece, sibling who when you say how are you you feeling they say, how is your day?

2:56 What did you do today? Exactly. You know them. You have them in your life. But soon we fill up with angst, so this is the 15 to 18 year olds who feel a great deal of angst. When they do feel happy, it is equated with excitement. Quite literally happiness and excitement co-vary in a very significant way. And it's not that they feel excited all the time or angsty all the time it's that the meaning of happiness, the definition of happiness is associated with excitement until you leave those feelings, and then started to feel more unknown, confined, alone.

3:32 At 19, 20, 21, I started to feel not well understood often times. And then we started to feel that we could conquer the world at 22 to 26. And now we start to feel that we actually have a goal. That we know what we're doing. The meaning of happiness starts to equate with feeling proud or satisfied or still excited before gradually trading ambition for balance. So at 30, we start to say we're imbalanced, we forgot to have kids, I stopped working out, oops, and so the feeling of happiness is equated with feeling aligned again.

4:11 Developing appreciation for our physical bodies. At 35, they've gone downhill in a very systematic way, surprisingly. We wake up and we're like wow, how did that happen? And our children, an evolving sense of in which we feel grateful, happy, calm, and then blessed. And as some of you know with this data, it is not that you die at 55. It's that there is just not the rich emotional lexicon. And I also actually, this is actually 12 million data points on 10 thousand.

4:45 So this is 12 million data points worldwide, so it is a very, very large data set to help unpack the emotional lexicon of our lives. So what we've done with this, is we've started to say if this is the story of our lives. And if this is, in fact, the story of the lives of our customers. So, even if you've captured strong value through your customer, this research would suggest that the value propositions going to shift in pre-systematic ways every 5 or 10 years, and it's the story of our employees.

5:17 So, even if again your employee set is incredibly happy, this research would suggest that in 5 or 10 years they're going to be shifting again. So, the way to think about this, and it's not just across your life, this is sort of the story of a project or even a day you get here for the alumni weekend, and you have again this sort of story that's unfolding. I'd be really curious. I invite anyone to actually tell me at the end of this reunion weekend, and just email me, @stanford, what was the story of the weekend?

5:49 What's the story that you actually are going to tell your friends, family, whatever about this weekend? You're not going to say like I went on Friday and I told Jennifer, and then I went on Saturday and I saw my friends. You're not going to do that. You're going to tell a story and that's the way you're going to remember this experience. So, you start out with discovery. You know, as we are at this moment where you don't really know your goals.

6:10 You don't really know what's going to happen and the meaning of happiness, again, is about excitement. Then you move to pursuit, so you might know your goals, you want to try and talk to a few people or be able to connect. And there, the feeling is I'm feeling like I'm winning, or I'm conquering the world or at least I know what I'm doing. And then you move to balance and you say how can I align my friends, my family, my work, my health, and then you move to impact where you wake up and you say man I've been so focused or focused on my family, but really what is my impact in the world, and what is the pro social benefit that I want to be able to create with a meaning of happiness is much more associated with feeling significant.

6:58 And then you move to savoring where instead of being more forward looking you're more present oriented, and the meaning of happiness is associated with feeling content in the here and now. And how many of you know individuals that, and again it's not just over your life, there's some individuals that just feel very content and savoring even if they're 18 and conversely there's 55 Five year olds who are excited all of the time. And in fact, we have research to show that if we give 18 year olds the task to breathe deeply, focused on the present.

7:30 Like pretend you guys do, in fact, do it all now. Breathe deeply. Focus on the present. You guys breathe normal. >> [LAUGH] >> Okay, keep it up for the whole talk. I, it's incredibly hard to do, but I can't begin to tell you the physiological benefit that it will actually give you, so I challenge you to do that. And then these 18 year olds, breath normally, and we come back and we ask them two very different questions.

7:58 You know, what is the meaning of happiness and you guys define it as Excitement, there's one person listening. I love you, fantastic. [LAUGH] >> And then you guys, after breathing deeply, focused on the present and feeling very connected, actually define happiness as contentment like a 55 year old would. So for various, sort of, with five minutes. A deep breathing focused on the present in a more meditative state. You can actually change your mindset.

8:29 In fact, we give you guys choices like do you want a peppermint refreshing tea. And you are more likely to pick the peppermint refreshing tea because often we make choices based on our definition of happiness or how to optimize. Whereas you are much more likely to choose a tea that's very peaceful and calming like chamomile. So, the point here being that our meaning of happiness changes over the life course, over a project, and even within the day as something as small as five minutes.

8:59 Now this research was really exciting for me and I'll start to explain why. The first is that it shows that even though most people believe that happiness is either one thing. Or in fact it's individual, so all whatever, 300 people here have a unique definition of happiness. This research suggests that happiness and its meaning changes in very systematic ways, all the way from excitement to essentially contentment. And the second insight is that what people are valuing and what they're searching for is really different.

9:34 So what we find is at 18, we're often valuing this notion of I just want to feel happy, and for me that's excitement. And at age 30, 40, 50, you're starting to feel like, I just want to feel like I have meaning in my life. That feeling of fulfillment. That feeling of joy and contentment. And so what people are optimizing for, and making choices based on, is a really different utility function. Now these two things, happiness versus meaning, are often equated.

10:04 In fact, 40% to 50% of the variance in these two constructs are both positive. So it's hard to kind of unpack them. But we've done that, to some degree. And if anyone's interested, just Google happiness versus meaning, and you can dive into the data. But I wanted to summarize the differences between these two very positive constructs. Because it has a lot to do with my premise which is I hope you start leading lives that are filled with stories to a much greater degree than you are so far.

10:42 So the first difference between chasing happiness or living a life based on this idea of valuing or searching for happiness, versus meaning is that happiness feels good. So if you ask people, listen, how happy are you and to what degree do you feel like you have a meaningful life? And then people obviously have different ratings on a 1.7 scale. You can start to partial out the positive covariance in those two things. And we can start to peel apart those individuals who feel very happy, but don't feel like they have a lot of meaning.

11:09 And individuals that feel like they have a lot of meaning, but not necessarily happy. So in that way, we can start to see that happiness is about really feeling good, and meaningfulness does too, but not always. So there's a lot of low points. Anxiety, fear, etc., wrapped up in feeling meaning. There's a lot of ups. There's a lot of downs. It's a roller coaster. So if you think about it from a story structure perspective, it's not winning, winning, winning, winning.

11:36 It's winning, losing, winning, trying, winning. There's an arc to the life of meaning. The second is that happiness is more focused on yourself. People that claim to be very happy but not a lot of meaning self-rate themselves as being [LAUGH] self-focused and more egocentric. The individuals that say that they have a lot of meaning that maybe are less happy are very anchored on others. Giving to others, feeling connected to others. And the third and last difference is that happiness is about how you feel now, and meaningfulness is about the past, the present, and the future.

12:13 It's much more lasting. So these are three of maybe the more important differences between meaning, but it's really hard to ask yourself well, I'm going to go out and have a meaningful day, or where's meaning found. And the contention would be that meaning is both captured and created in? A second person I love! Awesome! Okay, you saw where I was going with this.

12:44 So stories, all right, so what is a story? Three ways to define it. It's marked by ups and downs, highs and lows, it's a narrative with a beginning and a middle and an end. And again it's not just winning, winning, winning, there's no tension there, there's no evolution, it's actually an arc. So if you start to think about James Bond films, right. Wow, what happened? I don't know. He gets the girl. >> [LAUGH] >> The arc if very clear and it's repeated again and again and again, or Jurassic Park, nothing going on, T-Rex!

13:21 Nothing going on. Big T-Rex! Nothing going on. Really really big T-Rex! So it's not a sophisticated arc but it's still an arc. >> [LAUGH] >> Or Casablanca where there's micro or minis or stories that have arcs that echo the overall story arc. The second thing that pulls apart story from just a list of facts, or features, or a to do list, is that it's typically human centered. There's a protagonist, and there's characters, and there's the mix between both of them.

13:56 Many of you know the six word story written by Ernest Hemingway, who said, baby shoes for sale, never worn. And we don't know if that's a young couple who couldn't have a baby, or the baby didn't make it. But we do know something about that story. And neurologically, what's happening when you share a story versus just say there was a young couple and they couldn't have a baby. Is that the person listening to the story is making the inference about the story.

14:26 And when people make the inference about the story it stays in their mind because it's being processed by both hemispheres. Versus when I just share something to you where you don't have to make the inference because I'm telling it to you. You don't have to process that information nearly as deeply. So it's giving people two plus two and they are inferring the four, instead of just giving them four. So, how many of you have been in one of my classes?

14:54 My God, 40%. All right, so you've probably have done this, but it's really fun to do it a second time. >> [LAUGH] >> So your. >> [LAUGH] >> You're going to. So I made my students always share six word stories about their life. Here's a couple more recent ones. Not quite, aspiring to be quite. Tonight, he packs. Tomorrow, I pine. Married the wrong girl. Fixed it. >> [LAUGH] >> And getting old ringtones piss me off.

15:28 >> [LAUGH] >> So, I'm going to have you write, of course, a six word story. You can put it in your iPhone, or your cell phone, or. I encourage you to take out a piece of paper if you can and I'm going to have you write a six-word story about your Stanford experience. So whenever you were here, what was the story of your life, when you were here? And I'm going to have you share, so I'm going to give you 30 seconds to write it.

15:59 And remember, think of a change. Remember, think of how you changed maybe. It's a good little tip. I encourage you to make it funny if you have a sense of humor. And if you don't, still make it funny. And you're going to share it with the two or three people next to you. So you have 30 seconds. Go ahead, write it, or think it.

16:53 Okay, finishing up? All right, you're going to grab the two or three people next to you, and you are going to share your six word story. And you have one minute to complete all of it. All right? Ready, set, go!

17:43 >> All right. All right. Coming back. >> [LAUGH] >> All right, I want to see if any of you want to nominate one of the people you just talked to that had an epic story. Raise your hand. Raise your hand, I want a couple of volunteers who had a great story.

18:13 All right, there's one there, you're going to come up to the podium. Okay, guy next to the gal who's pointing vigorously. >> [LAUGH] >> All right, that guy, second, third, and fourth, and fifth, okay? So we have five and awesome, you're going to come up to the microphone because I guess we're live streamed. >> [LAUGH] >> So everybody in Bangladesh is going to know what I say? >> Bangladesh is going to love your story. All right, say your name and then your six word story.

18:46 Greg Lamps and it's the best $100,000 dating service. >> [LAUGH] >> [APPLAUSE] >> What a deal, what a deal. The best $100,000 dating service. Go ahead. >> Hi, I'm Stephanie. >> Stephanie. >> Do I belong here? Yes, wow a little bit sweeter but >> [APPLAUSE] >> These are a little hard to follow.

19:19 Betsy Parker met great people, met myself finally. >> [APPLAUSE] >> She also is very efficient with words, so that's five words. You got an extra word. >> So DDA. Old change except for the accent. >> [LAUGH] >> [APPLAUSE] >> All right. I think last one. Is there one more? Okay. >> Adrian Lee. Wrong girl. Wrong job. Right school. >> [LAUGH] >> [APPLAUSE] >> All right.

19:56 So the last thing I'm going to leave you with is moving forward into this weekend, really, again, open invitation. Please send me your six word stories of what happened, what you hope happens this weekend and then also what did. The last component of stories is that it lasts over time from a neurological angle goal as well as something that does last actually over time. So let me talk a little bit about, let's see if the volume's on the sciences story.

20:26 >> Once upon a time information was scarce, so we made decisions based on advise of experts. Using them as North Stars for instance. Now, thanks to the internet, we can ourselves try and find our own answers to questions that plague us, and find information to make informed decisions. But instead of finding clear answers, we often find noise. We're living in a world where we have too much information. And because of that, we're even more susceptible to great story.

20:52 >> It's what helps us decide what to believe in. Stories are important because they're meaningful, and they are meaningful because they're memorable, impactful, and they personally connect. First, let's talk about memorability. Eugene O'Kelly was a CEO of a consulting company. He started having headaches. He was referred to a top neurosurgeon in New York where he was diagnosed with late stage brain cancer, and he was given three months to live. He started talking to his wife. How does he want to spend those hundred days?

21:22 He was purposeful about who he spent time with, and what stories to share with them. He also thought hard about what would be remembered in those last hundred days. He and his wife would live each day with a focus on finding perfect moments where time expands and when noise is separated from signal. All that exists is that single moment. And he found in those perfect moments those were the most memorable stories that defined his life.

21:52 In one study researchers asked students to make a one minute persuasive pitch to other members in their class. And on average a typical student used 2.5 statistics in their pitch. Only 1 in 10 told a story. 10 minutes later, the researcher asked everyone to pull out a sheet of paper, and write down every single idea they remembered. Only 5% remembered any statistic, 63% of the students remembered the story. Stories are memorable in a way that statistics aren't.

22:21 Now let me talk about impact. Research shows that individuals are more likely to buy from a person or an organization whose story they believe in and which resonates with them. In one study Deb Small at the University of Pennsylvania and her colleagues wanted to determine how to best raise money for Save the Children. A charity focused on the well-being of children worldwide. We created two versions of a marketing pamphlet. The first version features statistics about the magnitude of problems facing children in Africa.

22:48 The second version also featured those statistics, but in addition, provided information about Rokia, a seven year old girl from Mali. Who face the threat of severe hunger. The subjects were given $5 as compensation for the study, and before leaving, the researches asked if they wanted to donate any money to the cause. The individuals in the story condition gave nearly twice as much money as those in the statistics condition. We used to think it was our rational brain that makes decisions.

23:18 Now we know it's emotion driving decisions and we rationalize the decision afterwards. Finally, I want to talk about personal connection. Research shows that if you present statistics to an audience, a certain part of the brain called the Broca's and Wernicke's area gets activated. So the language processing part of the brain is activated and we can understand but not feel. When a story is shared, the audience feels the story. Our whole brain is activated. The meaning is extracted.

23:47 The meaning of the story comes from the personal connection the audience feels when they're listening to the story. And when a story is well-told, they're able to feel connected, not just to the story but to the storyteller. When most of us think of advocating for ideas, we go to statistics. We go to convincing arguments, facts, and figures, but studies show that if we share a story, people are more likely to remember the message, be persuaded by it, feel personally connected to it.

24:13 And when data and stories are used together, audiences are moved both intellectually and emotionally. For lasting effect, you need to persuade the rational brain, but also resonate with the emotional brain. Recent behavioral research has shown why stories are so powerful, it's because they are meaningful. Those who tell the best stories will become the best leaders. If we consider the simple question, what is the story or why am I doing this, we may finally make very different choices at how we spend our time.

24:44 Isabel Allende once wrote, silence before being born, silence after death. Life is nothing but noise between those two unfathomable silences. But there is signal and there is noise and how we reduce the noise? Story. >> Pretty awesome! >> [APPLAUSE] >> Just joking. So story is awesome. Let me just go through the three types of qualities that companies that harness story well do.

25:20 They tend to harness story in a way that really designs story with authenticity, empathy, and purpose. So, first, design for authenticity. When you share a story, if you're a CEO, you're starting a company, you're trying to recruit, retain so you need to feel authentic. Research by Body shows that people can tell within milliseconds of meeting you whether they trust you, like you, whether you're authentic, and that type of science applies when you're especially sharing stories.

25:57 And both customers and employees need to believe your story and be inspired by it. And what's happening right now in the world is that brands and organizations and companies often feel manufactured but people don't. So one of the reasons story's become this kind of bigger thing or this notion of people as brands has become a bigger thing is partly because of that deep desire to have authenticity and trust in our relationships. >> Hi. I'm Mike. Founder of DollarShaveClub.com.

26:26 What is DollarShaveClub.com? Well, for a dollar a month we send high quality razors right to your door. Yeah, a dollar. Are the blades any good? No. Our blades are fucking great. Each razor has stainless steel blades an aloe vera lubricating strip, and a pivot head. It's so gentle a toddler could use it. And do you like spending $20 a month on brand name razors? $19 go to Roger Fedderer. I'm good at tennis. And do you think your razor needs a vibrating handle, a flashlight, a back scratcher, and ten blades?

27:01 [SOUND] Your handsome ass grandfather had one blade and polio. Looking good, Pop Pop. Stop paying for shave tech you don't need. And stop forgetting to buy your blades every month. Alejandra and I are going to ship them right to you. [SOUND] >> [LAUGH] >> We're not just selling razors, we're also making new jobs. Alejandra, what were you doing last month? >> Not working. >> What are you doing now? >> Working. >> I'm no Vanderbilt, but this train makes hay.

27:29 [SOUND] >> [LAUGH] >> So stop forgetting to buy your blades every month, and start deciding where you're going to stack all those dollar bills that I'm saving you. We are DollarShaveClub.com, and the party is on. [MUSIC] >> My favorite part is Alejandra, she just looks so embarrassed. >> [LAUGH] >> There's a lot of companies that are here in the room right now.

28:04 Raise your hand if you're from Manchester United. You might, like a good Australian, be drinking alcohol already. So I'm not sure, but, or English, right? Anyway. >> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] >> I'm not a big sports guy, but word, on the street is that Manchester United people really are authentically sports people. A second, incredibly authentic brand is Phil's, right?

28:35 How many of you drink Phil's? So the authenticity that comes with the barista and everything about Phil's just oozes authenticity. The second thing that strong brands that harness story well do is they design for empathy so it is not all about them. They know that brands too often try to be the hero of their story but more often than not, customers are the hero. And that has gone into Twitter, who has done a really good job at least of documenting some of the stories of ordinary people harnessing Twitter or Facebook or YouTube in ways that make those platforms clear in terms of its value.

29:19 And some you have already enjoyed this but Google, which has really struggled from a marketing perspective because they won't talk about themselves and if you hire a whole bunch of smart people and they just actually make great products, the products should sell. So when Google Chrome did not get adopted, it was not being used to the degree that Google thought they should, they had a real problem because if they don't believe in marketing how are they going to get adoption?

29:45 And their answer to that question was story. [MUSIC] >> Are you ready for your big party today? >> [LAUGH] [NOISE] [MUSIC] [NOISE] [MUSIC] >> So that single ad, which then led to Superbowl ads and whatnot, was in fact the reason why Google Chrome started getting adopted.

31:29 And it wasn't just a focus on Google Chrome, it was really a focus on Daniel Lee, this idea of deep empathy being a way of telling the story, where Google Chrome is just enabling Daniel Lee to be a great dad, and in fact, makes us all want to go have kids again, because we forgot to do everything that Daniel Lee did. >> [LAUGH] >> Damn, could of had more kids. So Kitchet, I think, has done a really good job around designing around empathy and really understanding what that user wants.

32:03 I think also MasterClass has done a really remarkable job by David Rogier to say you know, we want to democratize learning and the ability to actually create skills around story, writing, tennis. And we're going to do it in affordable ways. And I think also Sequoia Creative they've done a really good job from a venture perspective. A better understanding, not just their CEO's, but the users of the CEO's products and unlocking that story.

32:35 Third and last, a design for purpose. This notion that Tom's and Moby Parker and Body Shop or Ben & Jerry's all of these companies that have In their core what the larger mission, or the larger inspired mission is starting, but slowly I think especially here at Stanford to get baked in in a deeper way in business models. And you see people like Ben Horowitz say things like the company's story is the company's strategy. The story must explain why you exist, why we're doing this.

33:07 Why does the problem need to be solved? Why should you join the company? Why should you invest in in? Why should you buy a product from it? So all of these things if the story is not well told, if it doesn't come across. The answers to these questions will be no. The thing that's important here is that people want to be valued members of a winning team on an inspired mission and if you get any one of these words wrong, that's when you lose momentum, productivity, performance.

33:35 And maybe the most important word or two in the sentence is the inspired mission to what degree do you feel connected to something bigger? Something bigger that your team is enabling, your company is enabling, and you're feeling connected to the world because as the meaning of happiness shifts in these systematic ways and you move from feeling excitement to wanting money and status. To wanting some element of balance, you will need that desire for impact and significance.

34:04 I think Mystree's really done a remarkable job if you dive into their website, and you understand their business model, they've done purpose in a really clever and authentic way. I think Levo League has done it, as well as Amour Vert. Lastly I wanted to mention I think stories are important not just as an asset for companies and leaders, but also in life. So some of you guys know that I have three kids.

34:35 And they're now 14, 14, and 10. And story as a scientist trained to disregard story, literally told that some us the story you will not pay attention to it, certainly you want to make a decision base on it. So, it's been really an actually interesting last five years where story was shared immediate fundamentally change my life because I was wanted to be an oncologist. And, there was a time where I would try and train in terms of medicine, and realized, I'm not going to be the mom I want to be.

35:15 I'm going to end up being a professor. And, the reason I chose to be a professor was because I really wanted to be this great mom. And also, a great wife and a great friend, to my family. And so, that was the, really the impetus, to be a marketing professor. But I have to tell you a secret. Just among the whatever, 300+ live stream of us. I don't even like marketing, so I might not even like business.

35:41 So I'm finding myself as a marketing professor at a business school partly because my dad, raise your hand, Dad. Yep. There you go. Say hi everyone. Hi everyone. >> [APPLAUSE] >> Partly because my dad was such a phenomenal father and I saw my father who's a professor just be remarkable and he raised us with stories, he would take us on special days where my two sisters and I would get to go out with my father and he would take us, basically, which where he wanted to go And we would never want to go, but he called it a special day.

36:22 And so therefore we were so excited. And when they would take pictures and then we would remember it, and we would anticipate it as special, we would remember it as special. And even if we had a horrible time at the cow game or whatever it was, we did not remember and we did not anticipate to remember. And that way of living. That way of raising us as kids based on story became incredibly incredibly important to me.

36:51 Such that I made a career decision to be a professor. And hopefully be that parent and partner that I had seen in my family. And so that was kind of the context of living. Story as a way of living certainly infiltrated the way I was brought up, and it's impacted the way we've raised our kids, and I wanted to share two anecdotes with you. The first is the way, I have to get into marriage therapy, but the way my husband and I actually relate It's fundamentally different because of a story shared with me.

37:34 To give you a little bit of background on my husband, Andy Smith, who's a venture capitalist, at the time, maybe five or 6 years ago or a little bit more, he was running global brands at Dolby. And was really enamored with technology, IOT, social media, etc. I thought social media was complete crap and was so skeptical that we would really argue at the dinner table.

38:05 Even in front of our kids. What did you do today? I created a social media strategy for Dole Band and I'd say that seems like a waste of time. They're a business to business brand. And he'd say you're a marketing professor at Standford and you've never been on Facebook. That doesn't seem smart. >> [LAUGH] >> So whenever we disagree I usually run a study to see if I'm right. >> [LAUGH] >> So I asked a hundred people representative of the United States what they thought of social media and about 50% of them said very positive words and the other 50 or so percent of them again said a lot of negative words, which at least made me feel vindicated.

38:47 So you know in this belief that social media was completely destroying the world at that time, and remember I'm heads down publishing my papers, analysing big data sets, and sort of disagreeing with Andy on a few things. But I was teaching this creativity and innovation class, and one of my students, Robert who some of you might know, shared with me a story at the end of the class of how the class impacted him.

39:21 And he shared the story of Sameer, his best friend here, a Stanford undergrad, who went off and created his own company, just like 20% of you. And got married. Fell in love with Rena and was diagnosed with leukemia while they were traveling in India and he was shocked. Called Robert and Robert was shocked and asked their friend network what they should be doing and they learned that another friend of theirs, here and Fremont was also recently diagnosed with leukemia, and many of you know this data, but I will just share it with you in silence.

41:19 So Robert wrote a story about Sameer and that story about Sameer and those first two paragraphs was so clear, that if anyone got this email they felt like they knew him. You're so often asked to do things but without a story you're not compelled to read or act. And then the clear call to action, please get registered. Spread the word and learn more. Come to these websites and they took that simple story with a call to action and they harnessed social media and Robert reversed the rules.

41:48 He did things in very unexpected ways. He didn't just build up the story and put it on a website and share it via social media channels. They actually created two organizations, team Vinay and Team Sameer and used Google Docs and other tools to be able to communicate. These instant websites were also clear calls to action, where if you double clicked any of the links, up came an essentially a dragonfly type of model where any of these links off of the website.

42:17 So if you were here at Stanford and you wanted to run a corporate drive, up would come a bone marrow drive to work, a dummies guide and, all of these links are live. So, if you double click the text in red, up comes a letter. Dear Garth, I want to run a bone marrow drive here, this Friday, on alumni weekend. This is what we need to do, cut, paste, send and even a thank you letter. We ran a drive last Friday, we got 200 people in.

42:42 Thank you very much. This is what we need to do next cut, paste, send. So that social change in a box, made that story ignite in very significant ways. And many of you know, people acted. They created Facebook ads, and YouTube videos, and shared it on their own social media channels and through that, the result in 11 weeks was 470 bone marrow drives run. Nearly 25,000 South Asians registered, and in that time, Sameer found a perfect match, and Vinay found a good match.

43:16 Sameer now shared his story, even though he was sort of private about this all because he wanted to raise venture money and he did not want this out. And he wanted it to be private but once 25,000 people acted for him, he wanted open up. He started blogging. He shared that story. And he started appreciating life in a very meaningful way. Not in a happy, excited way, but in a deeply meaningful way. In a way that talked a lot about significance a lot about savoring a lot about others and appreciation and it wasn't winning, winning, winning.

43:50 It was hard, it was winning and losing and being scared, and wanting something and feeling grateful for what others had done. He even put his bone marrow registry onto YouTube so that in future years people could see that actually giving and receiving bone marrow is not nearly as difficult as you think. And the lessons they learned was that power of a single focused goal, 20,000 south Asians in the registry. The power of reversing the rules, doing things in very unexpected ways, and grabbing attention.

44:22 And how do you tell a good and truthful story, because otherwise people simply won't act. And then, how do you design for the network, allowing everyone to, in fact, contribute and choose their own weapon. Sameer, though, relapsed within three months of of his transplant, at the end of my class and that was him two days before with Reena. We celebrated his life by sharing a memorial service in the world, so a global wide webcast with 6,000 people participating.

44:53 Vinay also had a successful transplant but he also relapsed a few months after Sameer and he passed on in June. But the purpose revealed, as 40% of you here know, is that 266 people were matched in one year alone. And that is 266 people that don't just have the gift of hope, but the gift of time, because odds of survival go up from 40% to 80% if you find a perfect match immediately.

45:23 And the final thoughts is that most revolutions are sparked by the actions of the few, and your biggest asset is a clear mind and a large idea to find that ignition point and light it. And as I was listening to Robert's story, Robert, just like you, my students sitting in a seat just like yours sharing a story that just made me sob. All I could think about is what would I do now, could I water the story, would the story grow, how would that make me feel and all I could think about was that would make me happy.

45:58 So I talked to Andy that night and I said, what could we do to help? I admitted that social media had some redeeming feature. >> [LAUGH] >> And we started interviewing people, people that harness social networks, harness story. To significant in fact, and we found that all of them did these four things. All of them had a single focus goal, not two, not three, but a single one. They all grabbed attention and reversed the rules, did things in very unexpected ways.

46:26 They all engaged and were anchored on audience, creating authentic, relevant content. And they all enabled action, this idea design for the network versus an individual defined all of their movements. So that story well-told created 470 bone marrow drives all across the United States. And then, it lead us to basically right this book, The Dragonfly Effect, which I didn't ever want to write. But it just kind of, I felt like Sameer was writing it for us and then, it allowed, I used to work with 100,000 sheiks.

47:03 These 12 students here at Stanford who, in honor and legacy of Sameer and Vinay, got over 113,000 people in the bone marrow registry, in one year alone harnessing social networks and story. And that led to OpenIDEO participating and co-creating a design challenge to electrify and ignite over a million people internationally. Which led to at least one match of Amit Gupta with his friends and family and network who is alive and healthy today when diagnosed with leukemia.

47:36 We found a match and that makes me happy. And it makes me happy in a way that's very, very anchored on connectedness and gratefulness and blessedness and I think all of us have closet careers and all of us like maybe being an oncologist. And this opportunity for you to be back here at your reunion in the space of potentially thinking of that six word story that defined your time here. And then, thinking about your next chapter, what do you want that six word story to be and to what degree do you want to have a very different definition of happiness?

48:14 To what degree do you want to search or chase different things and might be create legacy for you? So, what to do on Monday? Three things, I hope you continue to think of story as an asset for your company and design with authenticity, empathy and purpose. I hope you've continue to think of story as life. With our three kids we now ask over the dinner table what was the story of the day because it turns out when you ask what did you do today, you get nothing.

48:46 But when you ask them to share just one story, it can be funny, it can be sad, it can be anything. They will lead to conversations that are much richer, and your relationship will be much richer at least, it was with ours. Stories can clarify our past and they can guide our future stories create and capture meaning. So bank your stories just like you did with me, in 30 seconds and you'll find that the most important stories that define your past and will indicate your future are those that are indeed personal, distinct, relevant, memorable they depict something larger.

49:28 They create legacy, so in conclusion, tell me the facts and I'll learn. Tell me the truth and I'll believe but tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] [MUSIC]