Stories, unlike conventional business reports, crammed with facts and figures, are things that people know, love, and remember. This gives them the potential to be a real asset for a social business, enabling entrepreneurs to reach out to their network of investors, customers, and other stakeholders.
Siemens Stiftung is convinced that storytelling – the use of narratives – offers a valuable complementary method of enabling players to see a social business from different perspectives. Switching viewpoints leads to a deeper understanding of the other participants. Misapprehensions and prejudices can be overcome and conditions created for sustainable and successful relationships.
This why we initiated the project “Stories about us – How to tell your business narrative” in 2015 in the Foundation’s empowering people. Network to increase the impact of capacity building programs through storytelling. The workbook just now published provides a basis for self-study and for the application of the story telling tools developed by entrepreneurs and facilitators.
On the website of the empowering people. Network you can test the approach yourself and develop practical skills as a storyteller. With the Virtual Storyline Graph tool everybody is able to draft their own story, and save the Storyline Graph as an image on their computer.
The workbook can be downloaded free of charge from the empowering people. Network website or ordered as a book.