Launchpad: Narratives
This is a blog post by Lil Patuck as part of the Frontier Tech Launchpad blog series, sharing key content from our 6th session. Learn about the full Launchpad journey here.
In our storytelling Launchpad session, we explored how to bring learnings to life and ground them in real life stories, both to gain deeper understanding of the problem being solved and make insights accessible to colleagues at FCDO and beyond.
In this further session we explored the important difference between stories and narratives.
Stories describe something that happens to someone or something. Each story has a beginning, middle and end. Cambridge dictionary describes a story as “a description, either true or imagined, of a connected series of events.”
Narratives are collections of stories refined over time. These narratives infuse stories with deeper meaning, feeding them into one another.
Over enough time, narratives become embedded into our values and accepted wisdom about the world, its people and movements. To bring this process to life, different groups have created appropriate metaphors over time:
🌊 Narrative waves - stories are ripples on the water's surface, contributing to deeper waves and currents beneath.
🍜 Narrative Soup – each story is an ingredient, and as they’re added to the soup it gently changes the overall flavour.
💠 Narrative Mosaic - stories are all individual tiles, slowly contributing to bigger mosaics.
There’s real science and evidence behind why these metaphors matter. A 2015 World Bank report titled ‘Mind, Society and Behavior’ shares three key ways of thinking that impact our human behaviour.
Thinking automatically. This is also known as “fast thinking” and refers to our brains’ ability to process vast amounts of information in a day by making shortcuts (otherwise known as heuristics) in our thinking.
Thinking socially. Humans are social creatures, so we’re influenced by social networks, identities, and norms. (This is why it’s so important to consider your story’s messenger).
Thinking in mental models. Humans process information through frames, narratives, or worldviews that affect how it is perceived and interpreted.
That final way of thinking is why narratives are so important for helping learning and insights travel. Essentially, we all walk around with a bunch of stories in our heads about the way the world works. And this helps us filter through information and decide what makes sense and doesn’t.
The implication of this is that we can’t just present people with “the facts,” and assume that they will weigh these in a detached and rational manner and act accordingly.
In this session we took a closer look at the narratives which surround our Frontier Tech pilots.
The metaphor we use on the Hub is the Narrative Waves one. This framework from the Narrative Initiative helps us understand the impact of all the stories we hear, from jokes and tweets to articles and films, and how we respond to them.
Remember: these stories are like ripples on a busy surface of an ocean which filter down to be part of a deeper current: the narrative waves which underpin and inform our lives.
Using this framework we explored two questions:
What are the existing, unhelpful narratives?
What is the new, dominant narrative you're trying to create?
Pilot Example: Predicting Threats to Human Rights with AI
For this pilot, we explored the ‘ripples’—surface-level messages or stories that might contribute to deeper narratives. These include extreme messaging around human rights, framing progress for one group as a threat to another, and the increasing distortion of messages through AI and social media.
Beneath these ripples lie deeper narratives: misplaced trust in misinformation, the belief that progress has “gone too far,” and a zero-sum mindset where one group’s gain is seen as another’s loss —like a fixed amount where more for one means less for another. At the deepest level, these reinforce entrenched worldviews, such as the idea that a “natural order” has been disrupted.
Recognising these underlying fears—particularly around belonging and autonomy—allows us to develop counter-narratives. One effective approach is storytelling that highlights mutual benefits rather than division. For example, patriarchy doesn’t just harm women, but also places enormous pressure on men to be sole providers, suppress emotions, and conform to rigid roles. The high rates of male suicide illustrate the toll of these pressures. Gender equality can alleviate these burdensbenefiting everyone.
This approach seeks to reshape a fundamental worldview: that true progress is not a zero-sum game. When we achieve balance, we all win.
If a tree falls in the forest, and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?
Stories are powerful, but not if there’s nobody around to receive them. A key way to measure the impact of the stories and learnings shared is by the response received: the action taken by the listener.
Here you can see the full canvas we used across both the Storytelling and Narratives Launchpad sessions, capturing our key characters and story hooks alongside the audience who would recieve stories.
We also considered the communities surrounding pilot projects, who could collaborate and support the amplification of stories and insights along the way.
Contributions covered everything from mothers in Nigeria and families of people with disabilities to innovation champions and data specialists. Some pilots were very focused on internal groups and people within FCDO, while others explored the role of those on the ground: community health workers or urban planners, they hope will use their final product.
Finally we explored experiments to reach audiences. In a world saturated with stories, insights, learnings and evidence there’s no better way to reach people than testing and refining as you go, just as all Pioneers do on their pilot projects.
Remember: the Frontier Tech Hub is here to help amplify pilot stories, insights and updates through our website, newsletter and LinkedIn and X profiles.
“I would love it if the communities that the pioneers are part of could be involved in pilot journeys. We [in TIU] hear brilliant, inspiring stories and insights from pilots. Sharing those with others in the programme is a great way to start learning out loud – it’s our collective responsibility to equip and motivate our colleagues to consider the role of frontier technologies in their own work!”
If you’d like to dig in further…
1️⃣ Read the first session writeup on Storytelling
📚 Read more about the full journey so far on the Launchpad page here.
⛴️ If you’d like to hear more about this session, please reach out to lil@hellobrink.co.
