In an attention economy where more and more options compete for scarce attention, the ability to attract and retain attention will increasingly determine who creates and captures value. Stories are a powerful way to engage audiences, but have limitations that make it difficult to retain attention, build relationships and mobilize action. Narratives offer a more powerful vehicle to amplify impact, but are much less well understood. Narratives operate at three levels in parallel: the individual, the institution and the social unit. By understanding this and crafting narratives that operate at all three levels, it is possible to amplify impact. New generations of technology especially social, cloud, mobile and Big Data make the development and deployment of narratives much more feasible. Narratives resist the confines of a single medium and tend to flourish in a transmedia world where the narrative can unfold across a rich set of media.