pivotingMany old businesses have changed their core business models over the years. Nintendo went from making playing cards to making video games, BMW first manufactured airplane engines and Nokia started out as pulp mill. Could these situations be considered pivots even though the previous business model had been successful for some time? Or is there something fundamental about a pivot that restricts it to companies in their early stages?
To answer this we should define pivoting.
A pivot is a substantive change to one or more of the 9 business model canvas components.
- Steve Blank
Can a large business change one of the components? Yes they can and they do. So pivoting is not restricted to startups. There are so many different ways to pivot.
Some of those ways are really hard for any small company to pull off and I think they are exclusive to large companies. Examples:
Zoom-out pivot: In the reverse situation, sometimes a single feature is insufficient to support a customer set. In this type of pivot, what was considered the whole product becomes a single feature of a much larger product. (Facebook)
Platform pivot: This refers to a change from an application to a platform, or vice versa. Many founders envision their solution as a platform for future products, but don’t have a single killer application just yet. Most customers buy solutions, not platforms. (Google)
Also check out this answer about classical pivots.
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