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\h        Please welcome Jeffrey Miller, manager of behavioral change effort for the walt Disney company.

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\h        Jeffrey miller: Thank you. Yeah, so I'm a Disney guy.

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\h        I have no business being here, right? And on top of that,

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\h        I'm a business guy, not an engineer or anything else. So i really don't have anything to talk about.

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\h        That's it for me, thanks. Everybody having a good time? This is great, right?

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\h        Let's acknowledge everybody that put this together. This is really terrific. [ applause ]

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\h        Absolutely. It sounds like most of this was done by volunteering and kind of a part-time effort.

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\h        This is really terrific. I'm not used to this voice of god thing.

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\h        Can we shut this off? All right. My name is Jeff Miller.

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\h        Yeah, I'm in charge of the Jedi mind tricks that we're trying to play at Disney.

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\h        What I'm really going talk about is i spent the last six years

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\h        in our business development and strategic planning.

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\h        Kind of looking at where we go with our theme parks globally.

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\h        How we -- how we grow, how we get better, bigger. Hard to believe, right?

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\h        So I'm going to talk about the business of innovation.

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\h        What I'm going to focus on is forwarding an idea through a matrix organization.

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\h        Hopefully I'm going to be able to tie a lot of what we heard today back to this.

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\h        So let's jump in with a blank screen. There we go. This is the first thing.

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\h        I think we heard a lot about this this morning. Everybody owns creativity.

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\h        It's not a silent effort because your title doesn't say you're creative, doesn't

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\h        mean you don't have the responsibility or right to be creative.

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\h        That's absolutely the fact at Disney, and we do that. I was strategic planning, but we engaged everybody.

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\h        And i think that's part of it, right? Build these teams like we heard Eric talk about at Publix.

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\h        A lot of multi-diversity, multiuse teams, multifunction teams that kind

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\h        of bring exposure and diversity from all different angles.

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\h        So critical in terms of forwarding an idea. At least proving the fact that it can work.

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\h        Second thing, this is suicide for an innovation forum, right? Think inside the box.

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\h        It's -- not what you want to hear, right? I think what this ties to is what we've

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\h        heard about this morning that there are realities.

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\h        When we can push the envelope to certain things, at the end of the day in

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\h        order to get this off the ground, you have to play by some form of rules.

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\h        Let's take one step back and say you need to challenge these rules.

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\h        I love it when people talk about how we've always done it this way or that's the way it goes or -- you know,

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\h        this magical invisible hand that guides us. You need to push against that.

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\h        But economics, physics, there's certain real thought we just can't seem --

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\h        certain things we just can't seem to get around.

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\h        We need to stick inside some form of box.

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\h        That doesn't mean the walls of that box aren't malleable and we can't reshape it.

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\h        I think Disney does this better than anybody.

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\h        Bob's going to argue that because he's going to talk about universal Orlando.

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\h        He was a Disney guy, too. He brought all these good ideas over to universal.

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\h        Telling the story, we heard a lot about this this morning. And this is so important.

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\h        If it -- if you can't tell the story, it's not a good idea and you probably shouldn't do that.

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\h        I think that's probably an argumentative statement.

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\h        If you don't tell it, if you can't connect with somebody,

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\h        then you're not going to get support for it, you're not going forward this idea.

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\h        I think storytelling is something that, you know, who doesn't want to hear the story of NASA?

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\h        You know, all the video, kind of grates on you.

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\h        We have videos just like that for Disney that talk about how we do nothing other than theme parks.

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\h        And we build cartoons or create cartoons, and it's afternoon -- not family entertainment.

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\h        And that's -- we keep going back to videos like it and consumer

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\h        research to just keep our drive where it needs to be.

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\h        And so we can continue to evolve and engage our story.

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\h        So this is one that i think we spend a little bit of time on.

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\h        I'm going to give you a little bit of a background of what i do in strategic planning.

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\h        Most of what I've done, most of what i worked on we won't see for another 20 years.

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\h        That's kind of exciting, but at the same time, i can't point to a lot.

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\h        So when we think about storytelling, we think about simplifying the message, right?

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\h        I mean, that's what it really comes down to is data isn't sexy.

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\h        That probably -- let that settle for a second.

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\h        This is something my mentor told me because we were -- i was trying to stay really focused

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\h        On, hey, look at this.

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\h        We can make a lot of money this way or if we buy this company, we can do this.

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\h        Just proving data or just publishing data isn't the sexy part.

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\h        What really get people motivated is when you can captivate them,

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\h        when you can touch them to a personal level and say this is how it impacts you.

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\h        Sorry, do you want me to pose? [ laughter ] All right.

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\h        But i think that's what -- that's the take home here find the connection.

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\h        Get it to its simplest form.

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\h        If it's about life change, if it's about finding a way to get away from something or whatever your storyline is,

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\h        I'm kind of thinking back to our big cartoons that we love to talk about.

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\h        It's about connecting. It's about finding that place to

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\h        Bring people into the project, into the idea, into your solution that you're creating.

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\h        And i think that's where storytelling really comes alive. This is kind of the continuation of that.

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\h        Once you've got your story, once you've got your team,

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\h        once you've got your idea and this is starting to flow through and you watch it,

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\h        you hand it off to somebody and they just -- they forget, they don't tell the story, they don't do this,

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\h        your solution, your idea, your concept, your project dies instantly because people lose the story.

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\h        It goes back to data. And then it becomes a numbers game or we value engineer all our story,

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\h        all our great elements out of it.

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\h        But if you keep that story alive and keep just serve as a champion, find a champion,

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\h        get as many people to understand the story as you can, you create champions for your project.

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\h        It's -- you want to call it a political game, that's fine.

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\h        But it really is about generating interest and keeping that going.

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\h        Find a way to champion the message. Whether it's you or everybody around you, tell everybody the story.

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\h        This is something i think we all have in common. Both Disney and NASA.

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\h        We don't get to sign our work, as creative.

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\h        I've had an opportunity to work on some really interesting projects.

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\h        But nobody will ever know about it.

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\h        But i know that I've contributed to a legacy that's bigger than my own.

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\h        Bigger than signing my own work. And i think we think about NASA it's the same thing.

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\h        I really want to be a comedian someday.

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\h        I think that would be a great career for me.

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\h        But -- i was thinking about how i could connect Disney and NASA and come back to this idea of legacy.

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\h        You know, Disney and NASA when Walt was around and the space program was really getting around,

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\h        they had a lot of connection. There was a lot of connection points.

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\h        And i think the last pieces -- we tried to go to mars once, too. It was a couple of years ago.

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\h        We crashed and burned. Apparently mars didn't need moms after all. We learned our lesson.

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\h        The legacy we wanted to leave was one of great storytelling, great place making,

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\h        and this idea of being a holistic family entertainment company.

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\h        So i think if there's anything you take forward,