Narrow Results

Few approaches to entrepreneurship have inspired as much devoted activity as the Lean Startup orientation to new venture creation. It has, in essence, become a religion. The genesis of the Lean Startup movement can be found in The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank. By approaching Blank’s book through a process of lectio divina, this inquiry identifies the beliefs, rituals, and virtues that animate contemporary entrepreneurial work. Interpretations are situated in the literatures of entrepreneurship and religious studies. The chapter closes with suggestions for entrepreneurial education that could improve matters of diversity and belonging in entrepreneurship.

Storytelling in leadership research is usually approached positively and seen as a non-problematic resource or even a “tool” for leadership purposes. However, using stories and narratives involves challenges for leaders. Storytelling may result in intended outcomes, but it also carries a risk for undesirable leadership consequences. In the storytelling approach, there is a hidden assumption that listeners are homogeneous and that they are not critical or active. Empirical studies rarely approach failed storytelling experienced by leaders: the feelings of failure, reasons, and consequences. In this chapter, we focus on the risky nature of leadership storytelling as well as the element of learning to be a better leader inherent in it. Based on empirical qualitative data, we apply thematic and content analysis on interviews from 13 leaders. Based on the findings, we present the following five special dimensions/themes of failure, illustrating the risks involved in leadership storytelling: (a) diversity of the audience, (b) situation/context, (c) loss of authority, (d) storytelling skills, and (e) audience misinterpretation. We interpret the findings in the context of the leaders’ personal experiences, their meaning for the leaders’ self-reflection, and the leaders’ leadership learning for the future. Moreover, we discuss these dimensions from the perspective of diversity and the hidden assumption in the storytelling approach that the listeners are a homogeneous group.

This chapter presents personal narrative accounts of lived experiences from African American diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practitioners and guides. These narrative accounts are an individual and collective reflection of life events, artifacts revealed during training events toward the achievement of True Storytelling institute (TSI) Train the Trainer certification and completion of Organizational Development modules. The Seven Principles of True Storytelling were the frame-work and methodology used to reveal parallel fractals and artifacts among the participants represented in the chapter. The account of events leading up to and including the training path toward guide certification presented an in-depth and absorptive milieu toward the objective of deconstruction and reconstruction driven by antenarrative interplay as a change process over the grand narrative in the DEI space. The seamless change process evolved through the seven principles and organizational development processes stimulated by David Boje’s 7 B’s and four hearts. The narrative life stories in the context of the seven principles of True Storytelling embody authentic voices of personal experiences integrating natural ways of thinking about aspects of DEI, rehistorizing from the past to the present.

The influence of digital technology on our modern workforce is significant and has been instrumental in the creation of new jobs in new marketplaces to satisfy new needs. Although we may not know the direction of future technological change, what is known is that change will invariably benefit some groups and not others. One group who have not benefited are Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand. With very few Māori employed in the information technology (IT) sector, the benefits to Māori from the increased opportunities are yet to be realized. Historically, Māori have been the subjects of research as end users of technology rather than as technology workers. The dominant narrative being that Māori are underachieving and that Māori will want to participate if they either acquire the technical skills or see the benefits of working in IT for themselves. The aim of this study was to push past this narrative and explore, via the experiences of Māori IT workers, why so few Māori work in IT. At the heart of this research was the question that drove this study: How can Māori IT workers be enabled to thrive in IT? Seeking answers, I traveled throughout Aotearoa New Zealand to kōrero (discuss, converse) with Māori IT workers. A newly developed approach called kaupapa tika was used, where unstructured insider-based interviews were conducted as a co-creation exercise to explore participants’ complex lived experiences. What was uncovered was that while working with IT is fun and exciting, in many cases, working in IT is not.

When managed properly, diversity can increase creativity and innovation performance, but it can also lead to processes losses due to task conflicts. To that respect, it is argued that diversity should be consciously managed, respectively, as any new product/process/ service development resources or efforts in order to find the right balance between different diversity sources. Thus, the main objective of this study is to develop a conceptual framework for managing diversity in open innovation processes. First, diversity as a research paradigm is introduced. Second, a framework for managing diversity including cultural, organisational, user-driven, cross-functional and disciplinary/cross-industry dimensions is presented. Finally, managing diversity with the help of portfolio management strategy is discussed.

This chapter answers a key question on how to engage employees globally using gamification. The chapter sets out an agenda of the requirement of global engagement for organizational productivity. The idea is to create a global engagement framework and propose guidelines for executing it. This chapter also provides primary real-world vignettes to give instances of real-life gamification usage for engaging stakeholders. These vignettes may be used as best practices by other organizations. The challenges listed may help organizations take precautionary measures and prevent a potential loss of revenue.