New Study Explores How Entrepreneurs Can Maintain Support Despite Setbacks

How can entrepreneurs continue pursuing ambitious goals when delays and setbacks threaten stakeholder support?

A new study by Norbert Steigenberger Opens in new window., Thomas Cyron Opens in new window. and Marcel Garz Opens in new window., published in Organization Studies, examines how entrepreneurs can adapt the narratives surrounding their ventures to maintain legitimacy and stakeholder support when promised goals prove difficult to achieve. The article, External link, opens in new window.“How Narrative Orchestration Helps Entrepreneurs Maintain Goals Despite Setbacks: The Case of Star Citizen External link, opens in new window.,” draws on an in-depth longitudinal case study from the video-game industry. The researchers investigate Cloud Imperium Games (CIG), developer of the crowdfunded video game Star Citizen.

When the promised future does not arrive

Entrepreneurs often rely on compelling visions of the future to attract stakeholders and the resources needed to realise their ideas. But what happens when reality fails to match those expectations? Repeated delays or setbacks can cause stakeholders to lose confidence and withdraw their support. The case of Star Citizen, however, presents an intriguing exception.

Cloud Imperium Games launched the project in 2012 with an ambitious vision for a new space simulation game. Although the venture failed to deliver the product according to its original timetable, it continued to attract existing and new supporters.

This led Norbert, Thomas and Marcel to ask: How can entrepreneurs maintain their narrated goals over long periods despite failing to reach them?

Their findings point to the importance of narrative orchestration – not simply changing deadlines or communicating more frequently, but changing how different elements of the entrepreneurial story work together. The paper identifies several shifts in CIG's narrative over time, including changes in the role of its audience and in how progress towards the overall goal was presented.

From audience to cocreators

One of the most significant changes concerned the relationship between the venture and its community.

Initially, supporters largely provided funding and watched as CIG worked towards its promised goal. As setbacks accumulated, however, they were increasingly positioned as active cocreators – testing developments, providing feedback and participating in the development process.

At the same time, CIG broke its distant overall goal into more immediate subgoals. Modules and incremental developments gave supporters tangible progress to experience, test and respond to. Together, these changes helped shift attention away from what had not yet been delivered and towards the process of creating the game.

Crucially, Norbert, Thomas and Marcel argue that these were not simply isolated communication tactics. Their effectiveness depended on how different elements of the narrative worked together. For example, breaking development into smaller goals also made it possible for supporters to participate meaningfully as cocreators.

Transformation without abandoning the goal

The findings offer an interesting perspective on how entrepreneurial ventures respond to change.

Entrepreneurship research has often focused on pivoting – changing direction when an original idea or approach is no longer working. Star Citizen demonstrates another possibility. The venture underwent significant changes in how it communicated progress and engaged its community while continuing to pursue essentially the same overarching goal. In this sense, adaptation did not require replacing one goal with another. Instead, the relationship between the venture, its ambitions and its stakeholders evolved over time.

This provides an important counterpoint to the idea that maintaining an original goal in the face of setbacks necessarily represents an inability or unwillingness to change. Norbert, Thomas and Marcel instead show how change can take place around a relatively stable goal – through evolving narratives, different ways of demonstrating progress and changing roles for stakeholders.

There are limits to what narratives can achieve. The authors stress that narrative adaptation needs to be accompanied by tangible progress. Their central conclusion is therefore not that storytelling can indefinitely compensate for failure to deliver, but that careful narrative orchestration can help ventures maintain legitimacy and support through setbacks for longer than previous research has recognised.

More broadly, the research reflects MMTC’s focus on transformation, offering insight into how organisations, stakeholders and digital communities adapt their relationships and roles as they navigate change and uncertainty.