Prologue

Summary

We decided to write this book for two reasons: (1) as far as we are able to determine, little has been written about hybrid heroes and (2) our insights emanate directly from the work we have done. The three of us started our collaboration with a stream of presentations at The Art of Management & Organization Conference in Brighton, United Kingdom, in September 2018. Though we had Skyped and emailed many times, we did not meet in person until the beginning of the event. As we shared a meal in an outdoor courtyard at a restaurant on a back street, our intellectual bond transformed instantly into friendship.

Inge Brokerhof (PhD) is an organizational psychologist, writer, trainer, and researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. In her research, she explores how stories influence career identity, future work selves and moral development and she has worked at Harvard Business School and the University of Bath. For her company, stories-@-work, she offers workshops, presentations, and university lectures about change rhetoric, storytelling, organizational psychology, and business ethics. She has also published short stories, poems, and songs.

Stephan Sonnenburg (Dr.) is a professor of branding, creativity, and innovation management at ICN Business School Paris-Nancy-Berlin. Before his academic career, he worked at advertising agencies and founded a management consulting firm focusing on the power of narratives in digital transformation. He is fond of saying that there is nothing as practical as a good theory, and that principle informs much of what we are trying to accomplish here.

Greg Stone is, in a sense, the “odd man out” as he is the only non-academic. He's an independent communications consultant and author. He has written two business books, one focusing on the power of the villain in storytelling, as well as a new mystery novel called Dangerous Inspiration, profiling a collection of artists who run the spectrum from virtue to violence.