For new ventures, future-making—narrating a desired and relatable future—is often critical to mobilize resources and create stakeholder identification and commitment. While previous research has developed the importance of future-making, relatively little is known about how ventures can successfully maintain their future-oriented narratives when the narrated future becomes unlikely to materialize, for example, when product development is delayed or derailed. This paper addresses this important gap. Drawing on a case study in the video game industry, we inductively identify transitions in narrative patterns that allow to maintain the overall storyline of a narrative that a venture failed to actualize, while adjusting the narrative’s figuration and temporal organization. We identify narrative tools employed to move narratives’ goal orientation and temporal structure, shifting attention from challenges (to enact the narrated future) to progress (to steps taken towards the narrated future), as central in such narrative maintenance.
