Finding personal stories is critical for teams to discover yet-to-be satisfied user needs in

order to achieve their mission within any start-up or research group. This is particularly powerful

in situations where a start-up team, or even a research group, has to respond to quickly changing

circumstances. Our teaching and research in the Engineering Design Education community has

not only affirmed that idea but also surfaced a few surprises about how teams can unknowingly

misunderstand the meaning and intent of a story. This paper considers the relationship between

active storytelling concepts and individual response. The method is taught at a private west coast

university in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and applied to company settings.

Audience engagement, based on previous work, is defined and evaluated by variations in

response to an ineffective or effective story delivery. A mixed-method approach uses multiple

strategy factors of social influence, along with self-reflective participant observation of student

work. Preliminary results show that four core “rules” (also known as emotional and

communication messages for success) may in fact lead to misinterpretations and can sidetrack

productive engagement for creation and collaboration: a) Repeating for perfection: in fact,

people report that they do not find flawless storytelling believable; b) Interacting one-on-one

within a large audience: the opposite may be true when you apply a “planned spontaneous” and

personally unique leadership approach in storytelling; c) Applying a template to tell and

memorize one story: in contrast, there are reasons to start in the middle of the story to find a new

and powerful beginning; d) Describing a generic user story so as to only present a stereotype of a

persona: both young and well established entrepreneurs prefer hearing a personal and emotional

story that invites them to step right into the storyteller’s shoes. Accurate storytelling techniques

allow start-up teams to communicate the meaning and intent of their mission while being

comfortable feeling uncomfortable. We find that genuinely expressed vulnerability in start-up

storytelling amplifies engagement.