Page 177 - 100 Great Business Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World (100 Great Ideas)

lietore Ion) ,„ however, piles of drawings were star 1,cd up in

the small studio. It was nearly impossible to keel) tabs on

what had been completed and what still needed to be done.
Finally, Disney decided to have his artists pin their draw-
ings on the walls of the studio in sequence. Thereafter any-
one could know at a glance how far along any given project
was. — The technique saved time; scenes could be discarded
with ease; fewer meetings were required. The story was told
on a wall covered with a special kind of board; hence the
term storyboard.

Mike Vance joined the Disney organization in the 1960s.
During his tenure as head of Disney University, the
company's employee development program, he and mem-
bers of his staff refined the storyboard concept. They recog-
nized that the technique had problem-solving potential be-
yond facilitating the layout of cartoon features. Vance left
Disney in the late 1970s to consult full time with firms on the
use of storyboarding. It is from his system, as modified by
Jerry McNellis and to some extent by me, that the
storyboarding process described here has evolved.

An Overview ofThe Process

Storyboarding is, as it name implies, creating a story on
boards. You take your thoughts and those of others and
spread them out on a wall as you work on a project or at-
tempt to solve a problem. When you put ideas on
storyboards, you begin to see interconnections—you see how
one idea relates to another, how all the pieces fit together.

Storyboarding follows the basic processes of brainstorming—
it uses a leader, a secretary, and a group of people working
openly and following the four rules of brainstorming. How-
ever, storyboarding takes brainstorming several steps further.
It is more organized and deals with more complex issues.

Storyboarding demands a high level of participation, but once
the ideas start flowing, those involved will become immersed
in the problem. They will begin to "hitchhike on," or embel-
lish, each other's ideas.