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Innovations are central instruments of sustainability policies. They project future visions onto technological solutions and enable win-win framings of complex sustainability issues. Yet, they also create new problems by interconnecting different resources such as water, food, and energy, what is known as the "WEF nexus." In this paper, we apply a new approach called Quantitative Storytelling (QST) to the assessment of four innovations with a strong nexus component in EU policy: biofuels, shale gas, electric vehicles, and alternative water resources. Recognizing irreducible pluralism and uncertainties, QST inspects the relationships between the narratives used to frame sustainability issues and the evidence on those issues. Our experiences outlined two rationales for implementing QST. First, QST can be used to question dominant narratives that promote certain innovations despite evidence against their effectiveness. Second, QST can offer avenues for pluralistic processes of co-creation of alternative narratives and imaginaries. We reflect on the implementation of QST and on the role played by different uncertainties throughout these processes. Our experiences suggest that while the role of nexus assessments using both numbers and narratives may not be instrumental in directly inducing policy change, they are valuable means to open discussions on innovations outside of dominant nexus imaginaries. ; This research has been funded by: the European Union's H2020 project MAGIC: Moving Towards Adaptive Governance in Complexity (MAGIC GA No. 689669); European Union's FP7 project IANEX: Integrated Assessment of the Nexus: the case of hydraulic fracturing, Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellowship GA No. 623593; Spanish Ministry of Science' Juan de la Cierva Fellowship IJC2019-038847-I/ AEI / 10.13039/501100011033; Maria de Maetzu CEX2019-000940-M. The present work reflects only the authors' view and the funding Agencies cannot be held responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.

Purpose
This paper aims to examine how the fields of social enterprise, social entrepreneurship and social innovation have theorised and applied the concepts of narrative and storytelling.


Design/methodology/approach
A literature review and subsequent thematic analysis were used. A keyword search of three databases identified 93 relevant articles that were subsequently reviewed for this paper.


Findings
Four main roles for storytelling and narrative were found in the literature: to gain support for social innovation, to inspire social change, to build a social-entrepreneurial identity and to debate the meaning and direction of social innovation itself.


Practical implications
Following the literature review, capacities and applications of storytelling and narrative in other, related fields are discussed to highlight practical use cases of storytelling that might currently be underdeveloped in the social enterprise and innovation sectors.


Originality/value
The paper argues that the social innovation and enterprise literature predominantly views storytelling as a form of mass communication, while often overlooking its ability to foster communal debate and organise intrapersonal dialogue as possible aspects of strategic thinking and innovation management in social enterprise, social entrepreneurship and social innovation.

"In this collection of original essays, empirical analysts and theorists across disciplines turn a critical eye to a variety of recent institutional forms and styles of innovation. They examine lived reality and theoretical underpinning, promise and accomplishment, but also the pitfalls and capacity-building challenges that face virtually all attempts to bring citizen voice, knowledge, and skill to the center of public problem solving. Their analyses are both hopeful and hard-headed and are guided by commitments to help understand appropriate fit and realistic sustainability. Cases include face-to-face deliberation, online networking and citizen journalism, policy forums, and community and stakeholder planning sessions across local, state and federal contexts. Policy issues run a broad gamut from community and regional economic development and environmental sustainability to minority rights and gay marriage"--

Jain Rāmāyaṇa Narratives: Moral Vision and Literary Innovation traces how and why Jain authors at different points in history rewrote the story of Rāma and situates these texts within larger frameworks of South Asian religious history and literature. The book argues that the plot, characters, and the very history of Jain Rāma composition itself served as a continual font of inspiration for authors to create and express novel visions of moral personhood. In making this argument, the book examines three versions of the Rāma story composed by two authors, separated in time and space by over 800 years and thousands of miles. The first is Raviṣeṇa, who composed the Sanskrit Padmapurāṇa ("The Deeds of Padma"), and the second is Brahma Jinadāsa, author of both a Sanskrit Padmapurāṇa and a vernacular (bhāṣā) version of the story titled Rām Rās ("The Story of Rām"). While the three compositions narrate the same basic story and work to shape ethical subjects, they do so in different ways and with different visions of what a moral person actually is. A close comparative reading focused on the differences between these three texts reveals the diverse visions of moral personhood held by Jains in premodernity and demonstrates the innovative narrative strategies authors utilized in order to actualize those visions. The book is thus a valuable contribution to the fields of Jain studies and religion and literature in premodern South Asia.

Innovations are central instruments of sustainability policies. They project future visions onto technological solutions and enable win-win framings of complex sustainability issues. Yet, they also create new problems by interconnecting different resources such as water, food, and energy, what is known as the "WEF nexus." In this paper, we apply a new approach called Quantitative Storytelling (QST) to the assessment of four innovations with a strong nexus component in EU policy: biofuels, shale gas, electric vehicles, and alternative water resources. Recognizing irreducible pluralism and uncertainties, QST inspects the relationships between the narratives used to frame sustainability issues and the evidence on those issues. Our experiences outlined two rationales for implementing QST. First, QST can be used to question dominant narratives that promote certain innovations despite evidence against their effectiveness. Second, QST can offer avenues for pluralistic processes of co-creation of alternative narratives and imaginaries. We reflect on the implementation of QST and on the role played by different uncertainties throughout these processes. Our experiences suggest that while the role of nexus assessments using both numbers and narratives may not be instrumental in directly inducing policy change, they are valuable means to open discussions on innovations outside of dominant nexus imaginaries.

This article furthers previous attempts at integrating narratology in policy analysis. Embracing an open-ended definition of narrative, it stresses the importance of maintaining distinct narrative levels and, more generally, of taking into account the pragmatic dimension of narration as an activity, including the often-implicit role and focalization of the policy analyst. Developing a conceptual analogy between storytelling and the exercise of power, it argues for a critical use of practical imagination in 'cold' situations of 'narrative salience', characterized by the absence of controversy or uncertainty, an uneven distribution of the power of scenarization. These propositions for a 'revisited' approach to policy narratives, equidistant from the positivist and post-positivist dichotomy, are tested on the case of 'narrative salience' where a particular storyline, national innovation systems, is so dominant that there appears to be no 'counter-story'. ; Peer reviewed