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Jonathan Littman
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Jonathan Littman is the coauthor of the bestselling The Ten Faces of Innovation and The Art of Innovation

Visit his blog: http://www.snowballnarrative.com.

Blog Entries by Jonathan Littman

Samsung Swung and Missed: Apple on Deck

(61) Comments | Posted March 19, 2013 | 10:33 AM

Samsung stumbled last week in a sexist Broadway style product introduction that revealed the mobile king's limitations.

While reviewers listed the gee-whiz features of the latest Galaxy phone, the Associated Press summed up many by concluding, "the phone has a grab bag of features that don't come...

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Million Dollar Hunger Reality Show: The Hult Prize

(1) Comments | Posted March 7, 2013 | 3:49 PM

The time was Saturday, March 2, 3:25 p.m., and the local Hult International Business School team was worried. The MIT squad had already received $40,000 in funding, and there was a star team from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology. Two doors down they'd seen the Stanford group rehearsing like...

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The Swiftboating of Apple

(13) Comments | Posted January 30, 2013 | 2:30 PM

Just like the torpedoing of John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign Apple has recently been buffeted by attacks and its own curious failure to define and defend itself with a robust narrative.

There's ample blame to go around, from the damaging hyper expectations of Wall Street analysts and speculators to...

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Olympic Rowing Dreams -- Day 2

(0) Comments | Posted July 12, 2012 | 11:29 AM

Click here to read Olympic Rowing Dreams -- Day 1

"We're getting no cooperation with the weather," shrugs Mike Teti, the non-nonsense coach of the U.S. National men's eight boat. There's an icy wind at the normally placid Briones reservoir nestled in the tawny hills behind the...

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Olympic Rowing Dreams -- Day 1

(0) Comments | Posted July 10, 2012 | 8:14 PM

The big guy with the golden hair and the chiseled grin straddles the rowing ergometer. There's a black heart rate strap wound round his bare chest. The coxswain seals a blue neoprene mask around the rower's jaw like a muzzle and then draws the clear plastic air cord to the...

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Four Tech Tales of Doom: Goodbye HP, Dell, Nokia and RIM

(7) Comments | Posted May 31, 2012 | 11:59 AM

Thirty-five years ago Kenneth Olsen, CEO of the pioneering DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation), stood poised to dominate computing for another generation. The brilliant Mr. Olsen had profited immensely by going small -- building efficient mini-computers in the age of hulking mainframes. By the mid 1980s DEC's revenues were peaking and...

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Shorting Apple

(10) Comments | Posted May 22, 2012 | 10:02 AM

Selling Apple short has become a quick way to grab headlines.

When you're one of the world's largest and fastest growing companies, you're one big bulls-eye. These past several weeks that fresh reality has helped fuel a high stakes narrative game, turning Apple into a case study for how...

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Last Boat to London

(6) Comments | Posted May 15, 2012 | 9:22 AM

Orinda, Calif. -- Coach Mike Teti stands up on his launch and tells the rowers in the sleek shell what lies ahead. "There's a headwind. Then it flattens out, and then there's a headwind at the end." He pauses and fixes hard on the coxswain: "Make sure your calls are...

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A Race to Remember

(0) Comments | Posted May 8, 2012 | 10:21 AM

The thousand-plus fans lining the shore of Lake Natoma expected no contest. All season long, the Oakland Strokes Women's Varsity 8+ had been the fastest high school boat in the nation.

The previous fall Oakland had won the prestigious Head of The Charles, eclipsing its nemesis Marin Rowing by more...

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Apple's Goliath Effect

(13) Comments | Posted May 3, 2012 | 11:24 AM

Success has its price. During the very months Apple has shined it has been battered in the media by The Goliath Effect.

For longer than seemed possible, Steve Jobs cast Apple in the role of David against the Goliath of Microsoft or IBM, brilliantly positioning Apple as the underdog....

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Dwain Chambers' Olympic Victory

(0) Comments | Posted April 30, 2012 | 5:39 PM

Dwain Chambers, the controversial sprinter who once broke the rules by taking the same drug that prosecutors claimed helped Barry Bonds slam homers, has struck a mighty blow for fairness.

The British Olympic Association, which has carried on a long, vindictive battle to enforce a lifetime Olympic ban against...

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Marin Rowers Win Big in San Diego

(0) Comments | Posted April 4, 2012 | 6:24 PM

The Marin Rowing junior boys program pulled off a rare trio of victories at the prestigious San Diego Crew Classic this weekend, handily winning varsity, lightweight and JV trophies. The Marin JV girls squad took first, the varsity girls finished a strong third, and the club's men's and...

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Sundance Beats American Negativity

(0) Comments | Posted January 31, 2012 | 4:50 PM

Last week I was flown to the Sundance Film Festival to offer my thoughts on a documentary and discovered anew what I love about America.

Robert Redford starred during my childhood in the classic American flick, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and went on to found the wonderful...

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Marin Rowers Win At Head Of Charles

(0) Comments | Posted October 25, 2011 | 2:35 PM

Marin Rowing's athletes took top medals at the famed Head of the Charles last weekend in the first major regatta of the season.

The Marin High School Boy's 8 from Greenbrae, Calif. won for the second year in a row, tying the record for consecutive victories with Eton,...

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The Perfect Row

(1) Comments | Posted June 17, 2011 | 12:53 PM

Three Marin County, CA rowing teams traveled to sweltering Oak Ridge, Tennessee for the June 10th to June 12th U.S. National Junior Championships. They had an outrageous goal: three boats, three national championships.

Coach Sandy Armstrong's women's varsity 8+ boat was coming off a great season, with...

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Sony Blames The World

(13) Comments | Posted May 24, 2011 | 1:52 PM

Sony's CEO has forwarded a remarkable new rationale for his company's recent catastrophic network security failures. Howard Stringer warned last week that the April hacker thefts of millions of his customers' personal records are a prelude to global digital horrors. "It's not a brave new world," he told...

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Foggy White House Storytelling

(44) Comments | Posted May 11, 2011 | 2:21 PM

Killing Osama bin Laden was surprisingly easy. It was getting the story straight in the age of Twitter and CNN that proved a nearly impossible mission.

The meticulously planned assassination of bin Laden was so well executed that even a helicopter malfunction didn't throw the team off...

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Sony's Slow-Mo Story

(5) Comments | Posted May 4, 2011 | 3:55 PM

Sony has been in slow motion the past two weeks, stumbling on how to tell the story of a recent catastrophic intrusion into its on-line gaming network. Indecision doesn't win in action games, and it's been devastating to Sony's reputation. The company has produced a textbook case study on how...

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My Lucky Hong Kong Gift

(0) Comments | Posted March 28, 2011 | 12:21 PM

Doing business in Hong Kong is not the same as doing business in New York, Paris or Rome. The biggest lesson for those planning to introduce a brand here or strike a deal is that superstition matters. Most know that the number 8 is considered a lucky number in Asia...

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Chinese Brand Knockoffs: Hooking Women on the Real Thing?

(14) Comments | Posted March 21, 2011 | 1:16 PM

Her eyes dart back and forth as she leans forward on a stool and gracefully unties the leather roll. Half a dozen gleaming women's luxury watches on the glass counter, each worth thousands of dollars -- if they were real.

We can see and touch them, but she's poised to...

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