Thursday 20th June 2013,
Carl Frankel's Story and Strategy Alliance
Services My Story Process The Brand The Book

Services

Business writing. That’s the story part.

Business consulting—strategy.

 

Marry story and strategy—why and how—and you get “Wow!”

 

I also blog. Step right up, get yer free brain candy!

 

(More …)

My Story

I bring to my work:

  • A passion for lucid thinking and communication
  • Deep expertise in 
    socially responsible business
  • An integral perspective
  • A commitment to positive change.

 

(More …)

Process

It’s intuitive, except for the parts
that aren’t.

 

(More …)

The Brand

Now it gets personal.

 

(More …)

The Book

The Art of Social Enterprise: Business as if People Mattered, which I co-wrote with attorney Allen Bromberger, is off press and listed on Amazon!

 

Read more …

Business & Social Enterprise

Carl Frankel Reviews The Art of Social Enterprise, by Carl Frankel & Allen Bromberger
Posted On April 27, 2013 | No Comments

I received my copies last week of The Art of Social Enterprise: Business as if People Mattered, which I wrote with social enterprise lawyer Allen Bromberger. I opened the book with some trepidation. I hadn’t looked at it for some months: I would be seeing it with fresh eyes. My anxiety was partly around this question: “Is this something I can be comfortable with, something I can be proud of?” But beneath this question another was lurking. As a writer, I mainly take pride in two things: high craftsmanship as a stylist, and the delivery of ‘aha’ insights. The bigger…

Continue Reading

Is the Capital Market Less Capital for Social Entrepreneurs?
Posted On July 1, 2012 | No Comments

Many social entrepreneurs have come to believe that having a social mission makes it more difficult to raise money because the vast majority of investors are interested in one thing only—maximizing profits. In our opinion, this is a simplistic and overly negative view. For one thing, while the capital market is preponderantly old-school in terms of its preoccupation with financial ROI, that isn’t always a negative for social entrepreneurs. When the social mission is integrated into the brand in a way that builds value, this will be viewed as a positive by even the most conservative investors. For another, there…

Continue Reading

Defining Social Enterprise
Posted On April 2, 2012 | No Comments

Like its cousin “sustainability,” the term “social enterprise” thrives on imprecision. Everyone uses it, no one knows exactly what it means. Not even the experts agree on what a social enterprise is. Especially not the experts!—who regularly fuss over boundary issues like: Must a social enterprise be a for-profit or do non-profits qualify? Must a social enterprise use earned-income strategies or can it rely solely on grants and donations? Can a social enterprise be part of a larger conventional organization? Can a social enterprise, in other words, be intrapreneurial? Must a social commitment be baked into the organization’s formal documents?…

Continue Reading

Random Acts of Writing

The Unbearable Tightness of Vision
Posted On February 9, 2013 | 1 Comment

When people talk about vision, and I mean this in the imaginative, not ocular sense, it’s usually associated with an energetic expansiveness, and with good reason. Vision opens a window onto vistas of understanding; it “takes us to the mountaintop;” it’s insight in the form of stories, pathways, explanations, and insight is exciting, liberating, fulfilling. Those ‘aha!’ flashes are creative ejaculations: they’ve a touch of the orgasmic in ‘em. Vision has a shadow side, though, and it’s one that the human psyche seems bizarrely ill-equipped to deal with. When vision transitions from inspiration to explanation (or, to put the same thought…

Continue Reading

Romantic Attachment (and Non-Attachment)
Posted On September 30, 2012 | No Comments

In the crowd I run with, “enlightenment” is closely associated with non-attachment. You take each moment, good or bad, as it comes and just as quickly let it go. The better you are at weathering shocks with equanimity, the closer you are to entering the Kingdom of Forever where everything is different, and nothing is different, and nothing ever changes. We have, in other words, an enlightenment hierarchy tattooed onto our synapses. It goes something like this: the more you can practice genuine non-attachment, the higher up the enlightenment ladder you are. The more challenging the event, the greater the…

Continue Reading

Loving What Is: The Last Frontier
Posted On September 29, 2012 | No Comments

I think I’ve finally figured it out. You can’t fight City Hall and you can’t slug it out with God. This is the Really Big Point the spiritual teacher Byron Katie makes in her memorable book Loving What Is. If you don’t accept the bad with the good, you’ll be in unhappy flight much of your life. We’re all miserable at times, but when you’re on the run from bad news, you’ll waste way too many extra hours fretting about the misery that may await you around the bend. Buddhism proposes something similar. The Cliff Note’s version goes something like this. Practice detachment….

Continue Reading