Dialogue Social Enterprise (Andreas Heinecke)
A social franchise that reverses roles so blind guides lead sighted visitors, changing attitudes to disability and creating jobs.
- Sector
- Social enterprise — experiential exhibitions and workshops
- Source
- Week 1 tutorial mini-case 1; revisited as the Tutorial 4 case study (Week 4 iceberg exercise)
The case in brief
Andreas Heinecke created Dialogue in the Dark in 1988. While working at a radio station, he was asked to develop a training programme for a young journalist who had lost his sight in a car accident. At the time he knew only stereotypes about blindness, and getting to know the journalist showed him the potential of people with visual impairments.
In Dialogue in the Dark, blind guides lead small groups of visitors through settings in complete darkness. Visitors must rely on their other senses, and the usual roles are reversed: the blind guide becomes the expert. The aims are to raise awareness of and tolerance for “otherness” and to create jobs for disadvantaged people by turning perceived deficits into assets.
Heinecke later founded Dialogue Social Enterprise, which owns the brand and runs it as a social franchise. Local partners are licensed to set up exhibitions and to run business training workshops and events. Sister formats include Dialogue in Silence, led by hearing-impaired guides, and Dialogue with Time, led by guides aged 70 or over.
Key facts
- Founder
- Andreas Heinecke, first Ashoka Fellow in Western Europe
- Dialogue in the Dark created
- 1988
- Dialogue Social Enterprise GmbH founded
- 2009, by Heinecke and three others
- First permanent exhibition
- Hamburg, April 2000, after more than ten years as a touring exhibition (Wikipedia)
- Other formats
- Dialogue in Silence (1997); Dialogue with Time (opened in Israel, 2012)
- Model
- Social franchise: licensed local partners run exhibitions and business workshops
- Reach
- Exhibitions in more than 150 cities in over 30 countries (Wikipedia)
Analysis through module theory
Type of entrepreneurship
The main purpose is social: changing attitudes to disability and creating employment for blind and disadvantaged people, which matches Nicholls (2006) and Dees (1998). It is not ecopreneurship, because there is no environmental innovation. It has a strong international dimension through franchising, but the international activity serves the social mission. A useful nuance: Heinecke launched Dialogue in the Dark in 1988 while deputy director of the Foundation for the Blind in Frankfurt, so its origin inside an existing organisation can be discussed against the intrapreneurship definition (Antoncic and Hisrich, 2003).
Innovation type and level
The experience itself — a role reversal in total darkness led by blind guides — can be argued as a product or service innovation. The social franchise that spreads it through licensed local partners is a business model innovation. Neither the darkness nor guided exhibitions were new technologies; the innovation is a Schumpeterian re-combination of existing elements.
Business model elements
Revenue model: the exhibitions and business workshops, spread through a social franchise that licenses the concept to local partners. Value architecture: the franchise partners and the blind guides are core capabilities and partners.
Internationalisation theories
Network theory explains growth through local partners who know their markets. Transaction cost theory helps explain why a licence to a local partner can be cheaper than running every exhibition directly.
Iceberg (Week 4 tutorial; Goodman, 2002)
The visible event is exclusion of blind people from work; the deeper mental model is the belief that sight equals competence. Role reversal targets that belief directly, which is why the innovation works below the waterline.
Social innovation (Week 4; Mulgan, 2007; Moulaert et al., 2013)
It recombines existing elements (an exhibition, guides, darkness) and creates new social relationships between sighted and blind people. It addresses a need neglected by market and state and empowers blind guides to transform how they are seen.
International social entrepreneurship (Week 4 tutorial)
Social franchising let local partners supply the context knowledge, networks and legitimacy that international social entrepreneurs need, while the mission and format stayed central to the business model.
Discussion questions
- 1.Is Dialogue Social Enterprise best classified as social entrepreneurship or international entrepreneurship? Why not the other types?
- 2.Is the key innovation the visitor experience or the social franchise model?
- 3.Who benefits directly (visitors, corporate clients) and indirectly (guides, society)?
- 4.Using PESTEL, what would a partner need to check before opening an exhibition in a new country?
Takeaways
- A social mission can be scaled internationally through a business model such as social franchising.
- Innovation can be a new combination of existing elements rather than a new technology.
- The origin of a venture matters for classification: check whether it began inside an existing organisation.