Case 11.1: Narrative Breaks At the start of 2014, a company called Aereo claimed to have found a legal way to broadcast cable channels on handheld devices, without users having to pay cable fees. While the response from most people was disbelief, that did not stop investors from valuing the company at $800 million in early 2014. In the summer of 2014, the United States Supreme Court, which was called to rule on the legality of Aereo’s streaming, ruled against it. Overnight, the value of the business dropped towards zero and a few months later, the company folded. A more perverse example is Ashley Madison, an online service that facilitates cheating on spouses, with online connections. Without passing judgment on the morality of this business the company had no shortage of investors and was looking forward to an imminent initial public offering, where it planned to raise $200 million from the market. Those plans came crashing down to earth, when a computer hacker got into Ashley Madison’s website and released a partial list of its customers, not good news in a site dedicated to cheating. While the company was not put out of business, it was mortally wounded and its valuation crashed in the aftermath of this news story. Narrative Changes In a narrative change, a part or many parts of your story are changed significantly by real world developments. These changes can come from different sources and have positive or negative effects, but one way to organize them is to use the narrative framework that we developed in chapter 8: Figure 11.1: News Stories and Narrative Changes When you make these changes, though, recognize that you will have to explain what parts of the story you have changed and why, but also be ready for criticism from two sources:
Case 11.1: Narrative Breaks At the start of 2014, a company called Aereo claimed to have found a legal way to broadcast cable channels on handheld devices, without users having to pay cable fees. While the response from most people was disbelief, that did not stop investors from valuing the company at $800 million in early 2014. In the summer of 2014, the United States Supreme Court, which was called to rule on the legality of Aereo’s streaming, ruled against it. Overnight, the value of the business dropped towards zero and a few months later, the company folded. A more perverse example is Ashley Madison, an online service that facilitates cheating on spouses, with online connections. Without passing judgment on the morality of this business the company had no shortage of investors and was looking forward to an imminent initial public offering, where it planned to raise $200 million from the market. Those plans came crashing down to earth, when a computer hacker got into Ashley Madison’s website and released a partial list of its customers, not good news in a site dedicated to cheating. While the company was not put out of business, it was mortally wounded and its valuation crashed in the aftermath of this news story. Narrative Changes In a narrative change, a part or many parts of your story are changed significantly by real world developments. These changes can come from different sources and have positive or negative effects, but one way to organize them is to use the narrative framework that we developed in chapter 8: Figure 11.1: News Stories and Narrative Changes When you make these changes, though, recognize that you will have to explain what parts of the story you have changed and why, but also be ready for criticism from two sources:
NarrativeMay2016.docx