Pivots are for the lucky. There's a better way.

Re:Pivots are for the lucky. There's a better way. by brandnewlow on Tuesday June 28, 2011 @11:09AM (#2705683)

Pivoting is when something rotates around a fixed point.

If you take the product you already built (your fixed point) and apply it to a different market, that's a pivot.

Pet Peave: If you rename your company and now it's doing something completely new with a new codebase, it's not a pivot, it's starting over!

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Re:Pivots are for the lucky. There's a better way. by SoftwareMaven on Tuesday June 28, 2011 @11:37AM (#2705787)

"Pivoting" and "failing fast" both seem to have been taken and abused by some people. These are concepts for applying learnings to your current environment. While you may wind up 180 degrees and three miles off of where you started, there is a continuous path between where you started and where you ended because you were gaining knowledge the whole time.

Discontinuous jumps may be necessary, but don't pretend you are pivoting your idea. And like TFA said, you lose a lot of confidence from your employees and your investors if you are skittish and jumping all over the place. The founders, like the name implies, form the foundation. Shaky foundations don't build strong buildings.

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Re:Pivots are for the lucky. There's a better way. by corin_ on Tuesday June 28, 2011 @11:34AM (#2705778)

On the other hand, if you're walking along and you pivot, you may only have changed your direction slightly.. but you are now headed in a totally different direction towards a new destination.

It's possible for a small pivot to make a major different, it's also possible for a pirvot to be 180degrees, i.e. a complete turn around.

That said, I'm with you, it irks me when a company "pivots" and is basically a new company with the same people behind it - but from the point of view of the definition of "pivot", it does fit.

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Re:Pivots are for the lucky. There's a better way. by jonathanjaeger on Tuesday June 28, 2011 @11:49AM (#2705840)

At the end of the day, people are picking hairs about the "definition" of a word. Pivot is an easy term to remember instead of having to describe at length the change a company made. I think the bigger concern is throwing the word pivot around to the point it becomes an annoying buzzword, rather than arguing about semantics.

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Re:Pivots are for the lucky. There's a better way. by brandnewlow on Tuesday June 28, 2011 @12:41PM (#2706072)

What bugs me is when folks use "pivot" to avoid having to confess that an idea failed or was poorly conceived. It's really hard to learn and get better at something without moments of reckoning where you take stock after something fails.

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Re:Pivots are for the lucky. There's a better way. by ryannielsen on Tuesday June 28, 2011 @01:39PM (#2706323)

The fixed point could be the product you've already built, but it could also be the team you've already assembled. If you've got a team you believe in and a product that's not gaining traction, pivot on the team and create a new product.

In my opinion, you're only starting over if you dissolve the legal entity, thus giving up the team and any funding they may have received.

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Re:Pivots are for the lucky. There's a better way. by true_religion on Tuesday June 28, 2011 @12:50PM (#2706103)

Twitter is claimed to have pivoted from podcasting to microblogging.

The fixed point there is the team, and the knowledge they gained.

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Re:Pivots are for the lucky. There's a better way. by brandnewlow on Tuesday June 28, 2011 @01:04PM (#2706173)

They bought out their investors, created a separate corporate entity, and built a new product from scratch. That's not a pivot!

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