A Tightrope Walker, a Nail, and Business Pivots
Well, it happened again yesterday.
Something that I thought was a problem turned out to be an unexpected positive for me. Over time, I’ve noticed these things happen all the time- maybe you have, too. A setback, accident, or mistake turns out to be just what I needed, in some strange way.
There are some great examples of struggling businesses pivoting to a new direction and having big success. You’ll find some interesting examples below.
This “unexpected luck” pattern is illustrated in the movie Man on Wire, which won an Academy Award as Best Documentary Feature. It’s based on the book: To Reach The Clouds. Here’s a summary:
“On August 7th, 1974, a young Frenchman named Philippe Petit stepped out on a wire illegally rigged between the New York World Trade Center’s twin towers. After dancing for nearly an hour on the wire, he was arrested, taken for psychological evaluation, and brought to jail before he was finally released.”
He was 1,350 feet in the air, and the cable he walked on was about one inch thick.
Petit and his team film the planning, training, and unbelievable execution of the “artistic crime of the century”, and a perceived setback plays a role.
The Twin Towers were new in 1974- one tower was finished in 1970, and the other in 1972. Petit and his team visited the towers months before they would attempt to string a tightrope line between the buildings (a bow and arrow plays a role). The group had to figure out how to get fake IDs to enter the building.
Then Petit accidentally stepped on a nail.
“After stepping on a nail during one scouting mission, Petit found he didn’t even need his fake ID — no one asked questions of a man on crutches.”
He was able to finish scouting out the towers, recover from the injury, and complete his walk. No crutches, maybe no tightrope walk.
When you move through a business pivot, the results may also be unexpected.
Defining a Business Pivot
The Harvard Business Review (HBR) defines pivoting as: “a lateral move that creates enough value for the customer and the firm to share.” Many startup companies use the Lean Startup approach to get a company off the ground.
Eric Reis is the author of “The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses”. As the Harvard Business Review explains, the Lean Startup process: “favors experimentation over elaborate planning, customer feedback over intuition, and iterative design over traditional ‘big design up front’ development.”
Try an idea on a small scale, make adjustments, try another idea. Pivoting can also work for large enterprises.
Two Famous Business Pivots
Many of the biggest names in business have pivoted more than once.
PayPal
Fast Company explains that: “PayPal pivoted not once, not twice, but at least five times before finding the innovative business model that led to its success.”
The first idea was Fieldlink, a business that provides cryptography for handheld devices. The company changed it name to Confinity, and created new technology to transmit IOUs from one Palm Pilot to another.
Finally, the firm pivoted to the payment system service that PayPals offers today. PayPal’s team included Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Reid Hoffman, who also founded LinkedIn. These highly successful business people saw the wisdom in making a business pivot.
Twitter
If someone asked you about Odeo, you’d probably have to Google it.
Odeo was a network that allowed users to find and subscribe to podcasts. The founders decided to pivot when iTunes started to grab market share. Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone pivoted and started Twitter.
When you have to take a detour, or experience a setback, pause and think: it might be an opportunity to change direction and find more success.