Several groups related to corporate/organizational storytelling have sprung up on LinkedIn recently (or at least have recently come to my attention). A lot of overlapping content seems to populate these groups, which confuses me a bit.

The group Corporate Storytelling has been discussing The Real Reason Stories Are Important, among other topics. (You may need to join the group to see its content and discussions). On Organizational Storytelling, members are recommending readings. Storytelling Organizations is based on the approaches of narrative scholar David Boje.

And on Stories for Business, Rachel Parkin challenged members to tell 6-word stories about themselves in the manner of the 6-word memoirs at SMITH Magazine. Some storytelling purists find the 6-word format gimmicky and antithetical to actual stories. But I find it fascinating to see the kinds of 6-word stories that story practitioners tell about themselves. Several dozen members of this group posted their 6-word bios.

Here are profiles for each of these groups:

• Great leaders inspire their people through both actions and words. Their ability to engage, motivate and inspire through the spoken word is an essential characteristic of their leadership and forms part of their personal and organisational brand. Corporate Storytellers [sic] is for leaders in the corporate world who strongly desire to engage their people by sharing a common purpose and belief through the power of storytelling. Our greatest leaders have employed the power of the spoken word to change the course of history. Barack Obama won the American people with his inspired oratory skills and his ability to engage people through powerful stories. Leaders and managers in the corporate world can also use the power of storytelling to engage their people and drive personal and organisational performance.
• Do you love storytelling - telling them, listening to them or reading them? Do you know a great story? Have you written a great story? Someone shared a story in [Linkedin] Questions & Answers about the recession in business, and they got 74 replies. I wondered how many more great stories (real or allegorical) there are that have the potential to inspire us all and get others on business thinking differently. So I [Alison Smith] decided to set up [Stories for Business] to see.
• Organizational Storytelling [is] an informal group of academics and practitioners who share an interest in organizational storytelling.
• Storytelling Organizations provides workshops, seminars, and consulting to balance narrative-past, living story emergence, and antenarrative future. Antenarrative is a bet on the future, the moves away from stuckness in past narratives, and capitalizes on living story webs of relationships. This group is open to anyone with an interest in storytelling organizations. See David Boje’s book: Storytelling Organizations (London: Sage).

Know of any other LinkedIn groups related to applied storytelling?