Concept
Pivot
A pivot is a structured course correction that tests a new fundamental hypothesis about the product, the strategy or the engine of growth, while keeping one foot planted in what has already been validated.
The word has been worn down to mean any change of direction, but Ries's definition is narrower and more useful. A pivot is not a restart and not a panic; it keeps what customers have proved and changes one thing about the strategy. His catalogue turns a frightening decision into a menu. A zoom-in pivot makes one feature the whole product; a zoom-out pivot makes the whole product one feature of something larger. A customer-segment pivot keeps the product and changes who it is for. A customer-need pivot keeps the customer and solves a different problem, usually one that surfaced in customer conversations. A platform pivot moves from application to platform or back; a channel pivot changes how the product reaches customers; an engine-of-growth pivot changes whether growth is viral, sticky or paid. Naming the type makes the pivot discussable, and most successful companies made at least one.
A real-life example
A team in Istanbul built a marketplace for private tutors and found that parents rarely used it twice. Their customer conversations kept surfacing the same sentence: what I would actually pay for is someone to sit with my child during homework. They made a customer-need pivot, kept the parents and the vetted tutors, and became a homework-companion service. Second purchases went from rare to routine.
How to use it
- 1When the numbers stall, name the pivot you are considering from the catalogue: zoom-in, zoom-out, customer-segment, customer-need, platform, channel, engine of growth.
- 2Keep what has been validated; a pivot that discards everything is a restart with less money.
- 3Reread your conversation notes for the sentence that began with what I would actually pay for. That sentence is usually the pivot.