Communicating success: Storytelling and Social Entrepreneurship

Storytelling is gaining relevance in strategy consulting and the communication of enterprise success stories worldwide. This approach is particularly promising in work with social enterprises. Within the context of the pilot project “Stories about us” for the Siemens Foundation, adelphi therefore carved out, developed and implemented a story about the Kenyan social enterprise Echo Mobile.

When developing the enterprise story, adelphi first identified relevant enterprise employees, partners, clients, and intermediaries from Echo Mobile. Audio-visual interviews were then conducted and the individual stories of the ecosystem actors documented. Following that, the narrative analysis of the film, photographic, and textual materials and the completion of the story and its episodes were carried out with the help of a variety of media.

Within the framework of the storytelling process, adelphi supplied strategic consulting for Echo Mobile by outlining and embedding the enterprise’s story within its network and operating environment. The story’s development should additionally provide the starting point for a participatory social enterprise workshop aiming to facilitate an exchange of experiences with ecosystem actors and other social enterprises.