Thesis Writing Gets a Makeover: Storytelling as the Path to Real Innovation
A new study argues that master's students should write theses as narratives, not traditional academic papers, to generate genuinely new ideas. The shift from conventional structure to storytelling—grounded in real people and places—could reshape how businesses and institutions develop talent and foster creative thinking.
Originaltitel: Writing a thesis as a story: Or how we learned to stop worrying and love writing
<p>Using a master’s thesis on ‘Terrestrial Management’ as an example, this article uses Hannah Arendt’s concepts of storytelling and thinking to give an account of writing a thesis as a story. We read these concepts through ideas from post-qualitative inquiry and suggest that thinking through storytelling is important for giving birth to new concepts. We suggest that writing a thesis as a story is a practice of love with the intention of giving birth. This involves playful encounters with other thinkers and practitioners to engage in everyday theatres in the mind. Engaging with concepts from the margins of management, as well as a focus on the marginalized, allows for rearranging the field. Writing a thesis as a story combines deep engagement with stories as they emerge through the interconnectedness of people, places, and practices with artistic modes of writing and the authors’ ethical conversations with themselves while navigating unfamiliar territories. A storyteller manipulates fragmented material into a story while still keeping it open at its edges. Writing is true when it is grounded in people, places, and practices, when it allows for continuous curiosity and conversation, and when it discloses an ethical and political agent who cares about the world.</p>