FGV The Crisis at Encyclopedia Britannica & the Encyclopedia Industry Case Study Question 1: Reflect back on the readings and cases we discussed. Apply wha

FGV The Crisis at Encyclopedia Britannica & the Encyclopedia Industry Case Study Question 1: Reflect back on the readings and cases we discussed. Apply what you learned to one of the cases we discussed (Aqualisa Quartz, Surface Logix, Rohm and Haas, Nutz, CHEMAN, or Encyclopedia Britannica), and answer the questions listed the case you choose.

[Aqualisa Quartz: Why has the adoption of the new shower been so lackluster? How should the new shower be marketed?

Surface Logix: Should the firm pursue the food deal or the pharma deal?

Rohm and Haas: What price do you recommend for Kathon MWX? Applying the typology from the reading “The Dynamics of Product Innovation and Firm Competences,” what type of product is MWX? What consequences does that have for how MWX has been or should be marketed?

Nutz Inc: Evaluate the new product portfolio of Nutz Inc. according to the criteria in the reading. Which of the three products would you give the GO-decision?

CHEMAN: Evaluate CHEMAN’s efforts leverage its technology in light of the advice given in “Findings Applications”. What should CHEMAN have done differently?

Encyclopedia Britannica: What resources did EB have, both market-related and technology related, before entering digital media? Could these resources be leveraged to digital media? What resources were missing for the entry to digital media?]

Question 2: Reflect back on the readings and cases. Apply what you learned to a firm of your choice and formulate recommendations to make that firm more innovative. You can interpret “more innovative” as you choose, such as introduce more products, develop more innovative products, reduce cycle time, take better advantage of new markets or new technologies, etc.

Basically for question 1 you choose one. of the 6 cases and then answer its questions. For question 2 you choose any company and follow the instructions of the question. I have attached all the cases for question 1 and supplemental material for question 2.

I attached the materials for the question 1 and when the question has been assigned, I will attached the materials for question 2 How Stories Argue: The Deep Roots of Storytelling in Political Rhetoric
Author(s): Andrew Leslie
Source: Storytelling, Self, Society , Vol. 11, No. 1 (Spring 2015), pp. 66-84
Published by: Wayne State University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.13110/storselfsoci.11.1.0066
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Storytelling, Self, Society
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How Stories Argue
The Deep Roots of Storytelling in Political Rhetoric
Andrew Leslie
Storytelling has long been an important part of both campaigning and
creating and maintaining community. However, the relationship between
stories and rational argument has been problematic in the study of public
moral debate. The question remains unsettled: How do stories argue? How
do stories have a persuasive role in political rhetoric? Rather than the view
that narrative reasoning is based in a different paradigm of reasoning, I
argue that the persuasive use of stories goes back to early rhetorical training
and that stories have always been used along with rhetorical argument as
part of persuasive discourse. Vladimir Propp’s work on the morphology
of folk- and fairy tales demonstrates that stories use topics, or topoi, in a
manner similar to those used to generate lines of argument in rhetoric. I
offer four aspects of narrative that affect the persuasive reception of stories:
performance, adaptation, context, and iconicity. These aspects of rhetorical
storytelling, combined with the topoi of the story, give us a new analytical
framework for evaluating the persuasive potential of political storytelling.
It was said in the old days that every year Thor made a circle around Middle
Earth, beating back the enemies of order. Thor got older every year, and the
circle occupied by gods and men grew smaller. The wisdom god, ‘Woden,’ went
out to the king of the trolls, got him in an arm lock, and demanded to know of
Storytelling, Self, Society, Vol. 11, No. 1 (2015), pp. 66–84. Copyright © 2016 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, MI 48201
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Leslie n 67
him how order might triumph over chaos.
“Give me your left eye,” said the king of the trolls, “and I’ll tell you.”
Without hesitation, Woden gave up his left eye. “Now tell me.”
The troll said, “The secret is, Watch with both eyes!”1
T
he author and critic John Gardner used this mythic anecdote as an allegory
of art and criticism. The artist and critic beat back the forces of chaos, but
those multiply while Thor’s hammer gets heavier to wield every year. In On
Moral Fiction, Gardner uses the hammer on postmodern writers such as William
Gass for spending their talents on fiction that glories only in self-referential irony,
undercutting characters and themes that might strike an ethical chord in their
audience—that might, in short, have a persuasive moral effect.
There has been much speculation over the years about how stories function
persuasively, that is, how they argue. That stories, or to use the more academic
term “narratives,” have persuasive impact has long been understood.2 Yet the
relationship of stories to rational argument structures has to date been rather
muddled. There are a number of ways to approach this relationship, which I
explore in this essay.
There is also broad agreement that narrative is important in politics, though
just exactly how may be somewhat uncertain. In its recent preliminary analysis
of the 2014 election, the Democratic Party found that, while their policies find
favor with the American people, the Republicans create a better narrative, which
makes them more attractive. Thus the analysis suggests the creation of a “national
narrative project” that will “create a strong values-based national narrative that
will engage, inspire, and motivate voters to identify with and support Democrats”
(“Democratic National Committee”). Narrative seems to be the balm in Gilead
that will heal all political ills.
Stories have long been used for persuasive intent, yet the relationship of narrative to argument in public moral debate has remained unsettled. How do stories
argue? This essay addresses that question starting from Walter Fisher’s influential
essay “Narration as a Human Communication Paradigm.” Fisher, drawing from
Kenneth Burke, posits two dimensions of judgment that audiences use in evaluating whether narratives offer “good reasons” for the action or motives depicted
in the story. Fisher suggests that narrative is a different way of reasoning from
rational argument: a paradigm of its own. In contrast, I argue that the persuasive
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68 n How Stories Argue
use of stories goes back to early rhetorical training and that stories have always
been used along with rhetorical argument as part of persuasive discourse. Vladimir
Propp’s work on the morphology of folk- and fairy tales demonstrates that stories
use topics, or topoi, in a manner similar to those used to generate lines of argument
in rhetoric. Extending Fisher’s analysis, I offer four other aspects of narrative that
affect the persuasive reception of stories: performance, adaptation, context, and
iconicity. These aspects of rhetorical storytelling, combined with the topoi of the
story, give us a new analytical framework for evaluating the persuasive potential
of political storytelling.
Narrative, Community, and Politics
Narrative is broadly seen to be necessary to forming and maintaining community. For Hannah Arendt, the connection between individual consciousness and
the public of the community is through shared narrative. It is the storyteller, as
historian, who makes public the stories by which the members of a community
understand themselves as a we, a body politic. For the ancient Greeks, the stories
of a heroic past served as a model for the virtues of civic life. Alistair MacIntyre
rejects modernistic subjectivity through an appeal to Aristotelian virtue, in which
communal values are sustained by public narratives that tell us the nature of the
good. The philosopher Jean-François Lyotard abandons any hope of progress
through politics and rejects the meta-narratives espoused by MacIntyre as hegemonic domination. For Lyotard, the postmodern condition means the celebration
of subjectivity through personal stories rather than the communal narratives of
the polis.
Jürgen Habermas contradicts this purely negative critique, demonstrating a
belief in the possibility of a politics that can achieve understanding and consensus
about crucial issues through ethical discussion. Although he focuses on rational
argument, Habermas implies a constructive role for aesthetics and, by implication,
for stories. A story may serve to thematize an issue: that is, to make an issue visible
to a community—to frame it in such a way that it can become the subject of
public debate and argument. Habermas explains modern alienation in terms of a
decoupling of people’s lived experience, their lifeworld, from the abstract rational
systems that steer society, such as the law. Stories are a natural way that people
relate and understand their experiences; thematization is a way of connecting
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Leslie n 69
stories to rational argument. An example of the power of thematization was the
1984 movie The Burning Bed, starring Farrah Fawcett. Based on a true story, it
depicted a battered woman who burned her husband to death in their bed while
he was passed out from drinking. The movie appeared during a period when some
legal theorists were advocating reform of the rules for pleading self-defense in
cases where a woman killed her husband or boyfriend, even though that person
did not have a weapon and was not immediately threatening the woman’s life.
It no doubt contributed to making public issues of domestic violence for those
who were not reading the more technical arguments in law journals (Dowd, 570).
This brief background merely underscores the complex relationship of narrative to rational argumentation. No review of the rhetorical role of narrative
would be complete, however, without mentioning the theorist Kenneth Burke.
Burke took drama as the foundational metaphor for rhetorical action because
the study of drama allows us to understand the motives behind discourse. His
dramatistic “method” allows us to unpack the hidden motives of ontological
systems and the discourses generated by them. Drawing on Burke’s insights,
Walter Fisher published an essay thirty years ago titled “Narration as a Human
Communication Paradigm.” Fisher sought to show that stories also engage in
offering an audience good reasons for the actions and motives depicted within
the story, although these reasons are grounded differently from those offered in
rational arguments. The persuasive aspect of stories, according to Fisher, lies in
two areas of judgment: whether the narrative arc of the story seems coherent and
probable (coherence), and whether it seems to correspond with other narratives
or experiences: fidelity. One important focus of Fisher’s narrative theory is that
judgment is placed squarely with the audience. In this the narrative paradigm is
in agreement with theories of rhetorical argument: that storytelling is an audience-centered art. If the story seems believable to an audience, then the motives
and reasons for human action depicted within it will constitute “good reasons”
that function persuasively like arguments. Fisher’s narrative theory inspired much
scholarship on narrative in the field of communication studies and resituated the
relationship between narrative and argument as a sort of separate-but-equal set
of intertwined grounds of authority.
Fisher’s work also raises problems for understanding the persuasiveness
of stories, however. The attractiveness of narrative as paradigm derived from
Thomas Kuhn’s notion of paradigmatic shifts in knowledge following new scientific discoveries. Fisher’s adoption of the idea of a paradigm ignores the long
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70 n How Stories Argue
history of the persuasive use of stories in the teaching of rhetoric. Everyone I know
can tell stories and make arguments interchangeably; why would the grounds
of believability for stories constitute a different paradigm from the grounds of
argument? Here we get to the philosophical nub of the issue. Fisher’s idea of
Homo narrans, people as storytelling beings, as the root metaphor for defining
humanity, is a very attractive one. Certainly storytelling is one of the oldest uses
of language, and it is a natural capacity of all people. Propositional logic, which
Fisher takes to be the heart of the “rational world paradigm,” must be learned.
What is at stake in comparing these two “paradigms” is the nature of rationality
itself. Fisher notes that “humans as rhetorical beings are as much valuing as they
are reasoning animals” (emphasis his) and that reasoning “may be discovered in
all sorts of symbolic action—discursive as well as non-discursive” (1). Reason,
in short, is broader than rationality. This has been a long-standing principle in
the teaching of rhetoric. For Aristotle, rhetoric was an art directed to general
audiences about matters of human action, which differentiated it from the more
specific forms of what today we would call “scientific” or “philosophical” discourse
that rely on strict propositional logic. When we discuss politics, the grounds of
arguments are certainly not restricted to strict propositional logic: appeals to
the audience are based on emotions, on character, and on popular beliefs. Even
Fisher’s opposition of values to rationality does not ring true: We express and
evaluate values in arguments just as we do in stories. The notion of narrative being
a different, although equal, paradigm of understanding from argumentation thus
seems a bit strained.
If we leave parts of Fisher’s paradigm behind, he still offers us two useful
principles of judgment for gauging the persuasiveness of stories: coherence and
fidelity. In the next section of this essay, I explore the connection of these two
principles with the classical practice of rhetoric and with the source of their
inspiration, the Russian theorists of discourse, particularly Vladimir Propp. But
in so doing, I do not want to lose sight of the central philosophical issue: In considering the discursive practices of politics, how is the polis/public/community
constructed through discourse, and how can reasons derived from the rhetorical
use of stories serve as justifications for action? If we see that stories and arguments
interact in the public imagination, thereby constituting “good reasons” for action,
we will be closer to understanding how narrative functions persuasively.
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Leslie n 71
The Topoi of the Storyteller
In a seminar at Northwestern University taught by Lee Roloff, more years ago
than I care to remember, I proposed in a short paper that storytelling depends on
topoi, just as does classical rhetorical argument. The concept of topoi, or topics,
is itself a rather difficult one. The first confusion comes from our colloquial use
of topic and subject interchangeably. Topical invention is used to generate things
to say, or lines of argument, concerning a subject. Numerous systems of topical
invention have been created across the history of rhetoric. General topics are
called commonplaces (koinos topos or locus communus), although the meaning
of “place” is problematic: It could mean a conceptual space, such as that created
by asking a question of the subject, or a place in memory (akin to accessing
a computer file), or a metaphorical place, such as imagining a place where all
matters of degree could be contained. Commonplaces are generic materials used
for creating specific discourses.
In classical rhetorical education, students were taught to compose a number
of different genres, and each genre had topics particular to it. For example, for an
encomium—a speech of praise (typically of a person)—the topics include origin
and birth, nurture and education, accomplishments and deeds, and comparison
with others. These topics are further divided; for example, deeds are composed of
deeds of the body, deeds of the soul, and deeds of fortune. Because the encomium
is a speech of praise, these topics can be interpreted as virtues: physical virtues
(e.g., strength and beauty), intangible virtues (wit, courage), and virtues of luck
(fame, wealth, friends, children, a good death). Furthermore, these topics were
deployed in order, so that they became the arrangement for explaining a life. Some
of the genres taught were basically stories, such as anecdote (chreia), narrative,
fable, and maxim. Aristotle listed maxim as a logical proof but had little to say
about it except that it should only be used by someone of advanced age, since
wise sayings are more credible from elders. What is often forgotten about maxims
is that they are usually morals taken from stories, particularly from fables such
as Aesop’s. The story itself may be long forgotten. How many times have people
called something “sour grapes” without knowing the fable of the fox and the bunch
of grapes? Composing an anecdote was usually based on a famous saying or action;
the anecdote would illustrate the validity of the saying or action. A narrative was
a story that would move the content of the speech forward: It was supposed to
be concise, persuasive, and perceptive and demonstrate good (clever, engaging)
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72 n How Stories Argue
style. A fable was a story ending with a definite moral. All of these story forms
were intended to be deployed persuasively in conjunction with arguments to
make a convincing overall composition.
How are these rhetorical topics related to other kinds of stories, those not
composed for rhetorical effect? In answer, I turn to the work of Vladimir Propp.
Russian and Eastern European theorists, including Mikhail Bakhtin and Tzvetan
Todorov, had a tremendous influence on twentieth-century theories of narrative.
Propp’s analysis of the morphology of folktales focused on two dimensions:
syuzhet and fabula. These are usually translated as “theme” and “motif.” They come
from the French sujet (subject) and Latin fabula (fable). This dichotomy, like many
similar dichotomies of discourse (e.g., langue/parole; syntax/semantics; énoncé/
enunciation, etc.), has entered into the study of narrative in some confusing ways.
Following Bordwell, syuzhet is thought of as plot while fabula is considered the
story being represented, that is, the “backstory,” or the implications of events not
depicted. Theme and motif make the use of these concepts plainer: Motifs are the
elements of plots, whereas the theme is the sequential ordering of these elements.
Propp’s insight into traditional stories was this: Whereas different versions
of a story may use different motifs, the order in which those motifs are deployed
stays the same. One can think of the stereotype of Broadway musicals: boy finds
girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl again. The motifs can be varied—for example,
girl finds boy, girl finds girl, boy finds boy—but these elements must follow the
same order because to have the girl lose the girl before she first finds her will
violate the principle of coherence. The fabula are then often misinterpreted as the
“real” story being represented, but this is to make a leap of inference. The motifs
themselves must correspond either to experiences the audience has had in the
world—meeting one’s eventual spouse, for example—or to other stories that are
stored in public memory. The link is thus not necessarily to events in the world
but to conventions of narrative that are accepted as plausible. It becomes apparent
that Propp’s categories of theme and motif map neatly onto Fisher’s dimensions
of coherence and fidelity. What may be less apparent is that the motifs, which
Propp called “functions,” are a set of topics applied to traditional narratives.
For example, many fairy stories include a transformation made by a magical
object. There are many different such objects with different specific effects, but
the magical transformation is like a topos, an inventive resource that can generate
many different specific plot turns. Themes are arrangements of topics, very similar
to the example of the encomium given above.
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Leslie n 73
While arguments often use examples or stories as support, many stories use
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