Well, I probably shouldn’t say “surprising.” Six years into my storytelling journey, I doubt any application of storytelling could really surprise me. But I definitely haven’t come across these four before now:

Mergers and Acquisitions: Helen Dunne compiled comments from a panel discussion on A Precise Exchange, in which Alistair Smith said, “Successful communication of M&A activity is rooted in having a clear, strategic story.”

Pitching venture capitalists: Chris Dixon advises those make a pitch to venture capitalists to Size markets using narratives, not numbers. “You should never rely on quantitative analysis to estimate market size,” Dixon writes. Instead, “The only way to understand and predict large new markets is through narratives. Some popular current narratives include…”

People are spending more and more time online and somehow brand advertisers will find a way to effectively influence them; social link sharing is becoming an increasingly significant source of website traffic and somehow will be monetized; mobile devices are becoming powerful enough to replace laptops for most tasks and will unleash a flood of new applications and business models.

Fashion shows: Adam Morgan, founder of Eat Big Fish, interviewed fashion designer Tom Ford, who last year directed his first film A Single Man (which, by the way, mesmerized me with its spot-on look and feel of the early ’60s). Ford told Morgan: “‘In a fashion show you have 13 minutes to convince a room of 200 people of your vision. … So you have to have an idea. And then you have to tell a story.”

Hospital safety: In The Journal of Patient Safety, article authors Dennis Quaid (!), Julie Thao, and Charles Denham look at story “as an untapped vehicle to inform, equip, and challenge leaders to drive change that can save lives, save money, and build value in communities.” They conclude: “Health care leaders have much to learn from storytelling practices from other industries, such as film and business, that they can apply to driving patient safety and improving the care they deliver.” (see an abstract of the article here). An initiative in Wales, 1000Lives, is also having success with patient safety through patient stories.