Applied Research + Strategy for Innovators
For people bringing new ideas into the world.
I work with founders, researchers, executives, creators, and leaders already in the work: testing, risking, adapting, learning, and continuing as their ideas meet reality. Through Narrative Intelligence, applied research, and strategy, I help surface the stories and assumptions shaping the problem so we can see what is actually happening, what else might be possible, and what to do next.
Applied Research · Strategy · Narrative Intelligence · Speaking
From the work
This shows up differently in every room.
A leader releasing the story that harder work is the only answer. A research team translating innovation science into language their field can recognize. An organization making decisions while the plan keeps changing. The common thread is learning to see what is shaping the problem before deciding what to do about it.
Narrative Intelligence + Leadership
Cascadia Management Group
From pushing harder to leading with clarity
Applied Research + Innovation Strategy
Imagination Factory
Making innovation visible enough to study
Human Judgment + Rapid Change
Microsoft
When the plan changes before the work is finished
What people say
“Paige is absolutely unlocking.”
Real words from leaders and teams who have worked with Paige — through strategic partnership, the Narrative Intelligence Lab, speaking, and organizational engagements.
Read client storiesPrivate Strategic Advisory
Bring me the hard thing you are trying to figure out.
A six-month strategic advisory relationship for innovators leading complex, original, or high-stakes work where there is no established playbook.
The work brings together strategy, lived founder experience, research, and Narrative Intelligence to see the system, question its assumptions, and determine what comes next.
Free exercise
Start with one exercise.
5 questions to see what's shaping your hardest decision — a free Narrative Intelligence practice for innovators.
Organizations
Human judgment for environments changing faster than people can process.
Paige helps leaders and teams make sense of complexity, challenge outdated assumptions, and make clearer decisions when technology, strategy, roles, and expectations are moving without a stable playbook.
Engagements include executive strategy sessions, leadership-team workshops, organizational labs, ongoing advisory, and listening and research work.
Narrative Intelligence Research
The framework underneath the work.
Narrative Intelligence is an emerging field and applied research inquiry into how stories shape perception, interpretation, judgment, choice, and action.
It helps reveal the stories, assumptions, frames, and interpretations inside a difficult problem. The problem comes first; the framework helps Paige work with it.
Speaking
Keynote speaker on Narrative Intelligence, innovation, and human judgment.
Talks that help leaders see the stories beneath their decisions, cultures, and transitions — and what becomes possible when those stories become visible.
Nasdaq · SXSW · TechCrunch · VidCon · ALPS · Microsoft
Explore speakingThe Narrative Intelligence Lab for Leaders
A live, research-informed learning environment.
A small cohort where emerging Narrative Intelligence tools and practices are applied to real questions, tested through experience, and developed in conversation.
Six weeks. Five capacities. One live question from your work.
Documentary Films
Stories change the world.
Paige makes documentary films about the stories shaping people, communities, and systems — from foster care and child welfare to rural entrepreneurship, identity, faith, and belonging.
Some open conversations. Some influence systems. All begin with getting close enough to the story to see what is really there.
Explore the films#1 Amazon Best Seller
The Twelve Creative Keys
A pathway to clarity, courage, and meaningful action in your next chapter.
There are moments when the life you built, the identity you carried, or the story you believed no longer fits. The Twelve Creative Keys is for those moments.
Drawing from Paige Williams’ experience of creativity, entrepreneurship, loss, reinvention, and beginning again, the book explores twelve human capacities that help us move through uncertainty without abandoning ourselves.
Available in Kindle, paperback, and hardcover.
100 Stories: The Narrative Intelligence Project
What does it actually take to change the stories we live by?
Through conversations with leaders, researchers, creators, educators, and thinkers, Paige is exploring how stories shape identity, agency, leadership, and change.
The project is built around one central inquiry:
How malleable are the stories we live by, and what does it take to change one?
Latest episode
I know what it means to build without a playbook.
I’m Paige Williams, a Narrative Intelligence researcher and innovation strategist who works with founders, researchers, executives, creators, and leaders bringing new ideas into the world.
For more than a decade, I built AudPop, a media technology company that grew into a global community of more than 80,000 filmmakers and creators. I have worked inside uncertainty, innovation, failure, reinvention, and complex decision-making — not simply studied them from the sidelines.
My work explores how the stories we inherit, absorb, construct, and repeat shape what we notice, what we believe is possible, and how we lead. I am the author of The Twelve Creative Keys and host of 100 Stories: The Narrative Intelligence Project.
If something no longer fits, that is often where the real work begins.
Private Strategic Advisory
For work that keeps evolving.
A six-month private thinking partnership for founders, researchers, executives, creators, and leaders navigating complex, original, or high-stakes work as the decisions, conditions, and questions continue to change.
Inquire about Strategic Advisory