To be useful in multiple contexts, stories need to be multiply organized. Here are a few ways that come to mind.

System Context

In terms of trying to apply what is learned from one context to another context, the nature of the system would seem to be potentially paramount. For instance,

1. Mechanical
2. Biological
3. Social
4. Ecological

Thus, Mechanical systems have no choice at either level. In principle, the systems are predictable.

Organisms have no choice at the part level but they do have purpose and choice at the whole level. That is, your arm cannot decide to go off on its own, but you can decide to strengthen (or cut) your arm.

Social systems have parts (humans) that can typically decide to be or not to be in the system and what to do, but the system as a whole also has purpose and bounds.

An ecological system has parts that make conscious choices but the system as a whole does not -- cannot predict how ecologies will evolve.

Other things being equal, we would expect stories that illustrate a heuristic solution to one of these kinds of systems would apply most to other systems of a similar type; less so to systems of another type.

Scope of Time and Space

Systems also differ as to scope in time and space.

One would expect, other things being equal, that heuristics for limited systems might not apply for larger scoped systems.

Patterns of Stories

Systems also differ according to various "patterns" as discussed in Senge.

Thus, we would expect heuristics that worked in one instance of a positive feedback loop (running the arms race loop backwards) might also work in another instance (running backwards an escalation of bad feelings between management and labor).

Aristotle: Setting, Plot, Characters

Setting would include when and where. Such an index might be useful, e.g., for getting a sense of what it's like to do business in a particular country or even a particular organization.

We would expect heuristics may well be applicable across settings UNLESS there is a cultural element that changes the problem space.

Plot elements

For example, whether the major conflict is intrapsychic, interpersonal, or between groups might help if you were looking for a story that illustrated a method of solving a problem. The "shape" of the plot and complexity might be relevant. The trick in problem solving aids is to get the user (or have the system) map from "surface" characteristics of the problem to deep ones. For example, the problem of figuring out the probability that at least one pair of 30 people share a birthday looks similar to the problem of figuring out the probability that at least two people in the House of Representatives share a birthday (435 members). But it isn't.

In general, we would expect the "game-theoretic" aspects of stories to serve as categorizations of applicability. Thus, pure-cooperation reduces to communication. Pure competition and mixed have different heuristics. However -- as the story of the two sisters vying for an orange (in which it turns out one wants the peel and one wants the pulp), what appears to be a case of pure competition may not be.

Characters

Characters, of course, in the trivial case might be relevant if they are about particular individuals that one needs to interact with. More subtly, suppose you had to "sell" someone whose character was "like" a character in a story. Useful dimensions of "like" here might include learning style, (concrete vs abstract; sequential vs parallel), attribution of success and failure (hard work, luck, ability, etc.).

Emotions

One might also imagine filtering stories on the basis of the emotional tone that the listener/reader is "left with" at the end -- or, the sequence of emotions produced during the story. .

Purpose

One might also classify stories according to its intended original purpose.

• Is it a cultural myth handed that has been embelished through many tellings?
• Is it a recounting of a true and unusual set of events meant to amuse?
• Is it a didactic story built for a specific individual?
• Is it a story meant to shape the way a team of people perceive what they are about?
• Is it a story the individual tells themselves about who they are?

Iin Schank's "Tell me a story", Schank categorizes the motivations for story-telling according to three broad categories: me-goals, you-goals, conversational-goals.

Among the me-goals, he says tellers can have five intentions with respect to themselves: catharsis, to get attention, to get approval, to seek advice, or describe themselves.

It seems to me that another reason for telling stories (or communicating with others in general) is that by the very act of communication, you can "improve" in some sense your own cognitive structure. This can be an example of "intrinsic learning." By constructing and telling a story, you can play various themes, characters, bits of knowledge, strategies off against each other and thereby "learn" without (external) feedback.

Business categories

Categories that might be useful in various business contexts might include:

• Stories about particular organizations that you might want to do business with. These might illustrate something about the culture.
• Stories about a particular national culture that you might want to do business with. In fact, such a book already exists with over 100 anecdotes that illustrate common mistakes Americans make when attempting to do business in various cultures.
• Stories about particular individuals -- decision makers you may want to interact with.
• "Success Stories about X" to convince your customers of the value of doing X.
• Stories about a particular kind of profession. (e.g., Studs Terkel's Working). The idea is that if you had to interact with someone of this profession, it might do to read such a story.