A World Scientific Encyclopedia of Business Storytelling

The following sections are included:

• About the Editor
• About the Contributors
• Contents

Before I begin the introduction, I would like to extend my thanks to all of the chapter contributors. We have worked together on this project for more than a year. This has been a developmental process for me personally as the editor of this volume because of the interactions with the authors. Each contributor has provided profound insights into the various facets of entrepreneurial storytelling, and each has been informed through vastly different life experiences and dramatically divergent theoretical lenses…

Based on the idea of a living planet Gaia, who can express her observations and share her visions on a sustainable future society in which a new entrepreneurship can evolve, this paper develops ideas for a framework for the Gaia entrepreneurship. Gaia storytelling serves as fundament to allow new perspectives on life and to create new actions on behalf of the survival of all. This chapter encourages the reader to pursue new intellectual pathways, which influence personal well-being and the well-being of planet Earth anew. It gives reason to believe in a living planet Earth. The chapter puts new values on the term “Gaia” and allows the reader to see through previously inaccessible perspectives. Gaia storytelling transforms from words into actions into Gaia entrepreneurship.

This chapter explores the politics of entrepreneurship in the bioeconomy. It explains how storytelling is used politically to promote certain kinds of entrepreneurship. The chapter questions the idea of the lone entrepreneur, who, armed with creativity, action, and risk-taking creates something new in spite of public bureaucratic structures. Instead, it shows how the bioeconomy is a step in governments’ attempts to encourage and conduct in a subtle way the transformation from an economy based on fossil fuels toward an economy based on sustainable energy sources — in this case, biogas. The chapter also discloses how farmers position themselves and enact their agendas when becoming entrepreneurs in this area. We discuss this case of business storytelling as an example of the relationship between power and entrepreneurship. The reason why biogas is particularly interesting is because of the powerful business interests in farming. Entrepreneurship is in this case used as a tool to revitalize existing power relations and their material interests rather than to create new beginnings.

This chapter follows the journey of Doc’s Bar & Grill and how the social capital of local firms can be used to overcome emergency situations. To explain how this is possible, this article employs the use of the layered account autoethnography. The setting of this article is mainly at Doc’s Bar & Grill in Potosi, Texas. It illustrates how social capital helped Doc’s overcome extreme circumstances by using storytelling and theory “vignettes” to provide insight on particular circumstances and how the social capital of Doc’s was used to help the firm survive. This article is of benefit to academics and practicing entrepreneurs alike because it displays at the single level how Doc’s Bar & Grill survived multiple disasters by the use of its social capital to call on stakeholders to support the bar survive in its most vulnerable moments.

My story is one where I thrust myself into an entrepreneurial endeavor at one of the world’s largest innovation hubs, achieving some successes, but ultimately falling short of the mission I set out to complete. Through an application of autoethnographic research, I propose the concept of coherence as a practical way to align entrepreneurial storytelling and management techniques as both are critical to successful venturing and key ingredients for an ensemble may be required to sustain the exploitation of an opportunity.

This chapter is a layered account triographic examination of the sharing economy, specifically Airbnb, in Europe and the former Soviet Union. The three perspectives provided through vignettes provide three distinct contributions. The academician voice illustrates how the rise of the sharing economy supports radical process theory and the use of kairological time to question notions of the extended self. The host voice illustrates the emotional and performative transformations that lead the second author to become a user and host of Airbnb throughout Europe and the former Soviet Union. The other voices acquired during interviews illustrate additional insight into the plagues and pleasures of the sharing economy and the diverse reasons of why individuals are motivated to participate in Airbnb. Together, these voices illustrate how the sharing economy challenges conventional notions of property in contemporary society. Possessions no longer serve as the exclusive domain of the owner. Airbnb as a platform becomes the coordinator for the use of possessions, rendering property subject to mutually negotiated use between the Airbnb platform, the guests, and hosts. This manuscript is of use to practitioners and academicians alike who wish to better understand the novelty and obstacles of the sharing economy.

Autoethnography is a recognized research method used broadly in the social sciences, particularly in storytelling. Its use has been scarce not only within the area of entrepreneurship but also specifically on intrapreneurship processes and those applied in academic university environments. I used analytical generalization following Chang (2008) that is based on my experience as the leader of the university’s entrepreneurship teachers’ transversal academy and former director of the university’s business incubator, where the aim was to promote entrepreneurship as the engine of a paradigm shift within the university (located in Mexico). The results of this study suggest a broad reflection of organizational, social, and cultural aspects, which are immersed in the processes of change in every institution, where intrapreneurship can be viewed and analyzed under chronological, kairological, and aionological time process, resulting in a novel view on both entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship studies.

This chapter is a story about an economist’s prosaic entrepreneurship activities as an expert witness. This particular case reviews the ways to evaluate the lost earning capacity for a prison guard who was terminated from employment due to a gender change operation. The debate in this manuscript involves whether a person changing gender should be considered as a male or a female with regard to economic damages. The manuscript provides thick descriptions before transitioning to provide a roadmap of the antenarratives behind success as a prosaic entrepreneur as an expert witness. These skills include willingness to argue with attorneys, bookkeeping, keeping up with literature, personal responsibility, and integrity.

This article employs an autoethnographic approach to communicate a singular story of entrepreneurship that was started in the mid-1990s. The resulting formation was a non-profit organization dedicated to helping the disadvantaged to acquire the necessary soft skills, the absence of which significantly contributed to their impedance to accessing work opportunities in the marketplace. The focus of this chapter is primarily upon the motivation, initiation, and implementation processes of the founder who insists that the advent of Just People, Inc. originated from the biblical metanarrative and was enhanced by a specific biblical micronarrative. The proposition is that the power of story calls into existence the collective enterprise resources from the unseen realm into the material, seen realm. The main contribution of this chapter is connecting the metaphysical with the physical world that bears positive impact on intended beneficiaries of entrepreneurial activities.

This chapter begins with a discussion of pluralism by focusing on the differences between civic and theological pluralism. A special subset of civic pluralism from Eboo Patel is introduced with three core concepts: respect for identity, relationships with different communities, and a commitment to the common good.This understanding of civic pluralism, combined with social capital forms the theoretical basis for a public narrative analysis of Patel’s founding of the Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC), which is designed to bring people together, despite having different religious views.The creation of the IFYC is an act of social entrepreneurship but also one of narrative entrepreneurship that bridges the gap between competing institutional narratives.The chapter ends with a call for action for the practical action of equipping college students, faculty, and staff to be interfaith leaders who, in turn, impact the national community, as well as the more abstract and broad action of bringing America together around a “civil religion.”

Money laundering is a global phenomenon from which data can be aggregated from local communities to societal levels. At the societal level, we generally address this phenomenon institutionally through public policy and economic theories, perhaps through community awareness or financial educational programs. From this vantage point, we hope to discover trends and patterns in this behavior in ways to better understand money laundering and merit future research. There are several overlapping and often confusing dimensions to the money laundering phenomenon. What motivates people to launder money from the perspective of the entrepreneur? In this discussion, we examine an array of possible motivations related to composite scenarios. Some individuals may experience psychological triggers based on need when presented with the opportunity to launder money. The purpose is to make these illicit finds appear legitimate. Financial laundering, or the “cleaning” of illicit financial proceeds gained from criminal activity, also has significant effects in the international political economy. Future inquiry would involve continued research exploring social network theory or perhaps the neural networks of the human brain. However, for the purposes of this discussion, we survey this illicit transitional process phenomenon through an entrepreneurial lens at the individual, community, and international levels.

Many organizations lack an authentic link between its brand and its business story. Promises made to internal stakeholders can’t be kept toward external stakeholders. This chapter examines how a brand can be strengthened by a successful story. The results of a systematic literature review have shown that cognitive dissonance among internal employees and external stakeholders arises if an organization’s brand and its story are inconsistent. The famous campaign “Facing The North” by Mercedes-Benz and The North Face illustrates our findings regarding an experience-based brand story. This chapter addresses researchers and practitioners in the fields of entrepreneurship as well as marketing and enables them to learn how to use an affecting business story to strengthen an organization’s brand.

Our understanding of an entrepreneurship varies by our interpretations. Since there is no widely accepted definition of entrepreneurship, there is a dilemma in the literature because we cannot first understand entrepreneurial behavior. The reason why there is no widely accepted definition of entrepreneurship is the competing antenarratives that influence entrepreneurial behavior. Entrepreneurial behavior manifests itself from three internal antenarratives that are the soul, individual psyche, and the collective unconscious. How you view the world will determine which of these antenarratives guide your interpretation and understanding of entrepreneurship and will lead to different types of behavior. Therefore, this chapter expands upon these three antenarratives to provide an outline and a deeper understanding of how entrepreneurial behavior manifests itself to orient the reader to what entrepreneurship means to them.

The life of an entrepreneur can be stressful and complex, with insecurity, risk, and hard decisions. There is a lot of stress and burnout among entrepreneurs. It seems like entrepreneurship education doesn’t prioritize human skills, in spite of the fact that they can help entrepreneurs and founders in start-ups deal with resistance. This chapter explores from the author’s perspective how you can help yourself or others become entrepreneurs “by heart,” who can navigate in complexity without getting stressed or experiencing burnout. To explore this concept, I utilize personal cases of entrepreneurship, quantum physics, and the change management method, true storytelling. The chapter focuses on how to work with your personal story, the seven principles in true storytelling, and energy as a way of becoming an entrepreneur and creating an ethical strategy.

The following sections are included:

• Epilogue
• Index