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The Innovation Imperative: Adapt or Fade into Irrelevance
In January 2020, as the world stood on the precipice of unprecedented change, Gary Shapiro's wife returned home with news of a mysterious quarantine in Wuhan, China. Little did they know this moment would trigger a cascade of pivots affecting every aspect of life and business. Through decades leading the Consumer Technology Association and organizing CES-the world's largest technology showcase-Shapiro has witnessed firsthand how companies either evolve or disappear. Once-dominant retailers like Blockbuster, Circuit City, and Sears collapsed when they failed to adapt, while others transformed themselves to thrive amid changing consumer needs.
What makes "Pivot or Die" particularly relevant is its timing-published after we've collectively experienced one of history's most significant forced pivots during the pandemic. The book has garnered praise from business leaders like Delta CEO Ed Bastian, who credits Shapiro with creating a platform where businesses can experiment and pivots begin. Beyond business circles, the book resonates with anyone navigating our rapidly changing world, offering a framework for making decisions when there seems no way forward. As Shapiro demonstrates through countless examples, the ability to pivot isn't just a business skill-it's the fundamental difference between thriving and becoming obsolete in the modern world.
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The Art of the Pivot: Recognizing When Change Is Necessary
A pivot isn't abandoning your identity or core principles-it's an intentional change in direction when circumstances demand it. What distinguishes humans from other species is our capacity for conscious decision-making rather than merely responding to stimuli. While good genes help species survive gradual changes, they offer little protection against major disruptors like climate shifts or technological revolutions. Today, our greatest threats come not from natural disasters but from human-created challenges: weapons proliferation, climate change, cyberattacks, and potentially misused artificial intelligence.
The Consumer Technology Association's pivot to an all-digital CES in 2021 exemplifies this decision-making process. Despite criticism from other event producers, Shapiro announced the virtual format seven months before the event-a decision that cost CTA millions in expenses and lost revenue while requiring a 10% staff reduction. The team completely reimagined the experience, partnering with Microsoft to create a digital platform where 70,000 people registered for networking experiences. When a historic power outage hit Microsoft's campus on the morning of the first digital CES, backup generators saved the event. Despite these challenges, the virtual show was a triumph with 1,000 exhibits, 150,000 visitors, and 100 programming hours showcasing innovations from rollable phones to sanitizing robots.
This experience taught valuable lessons in creativity and resilience that influenced future events. For CES 2022, the team created a hybrid format with strong digital components while returning to Las Vegas in-person, implementing comprehensive safety measures despite ongoing COVID concerns. When the Omicron variant emerged just before the event and major exhibitors began canceling, CTA shortened the event by one day but proceeded, recognizing that many smaller companies depended on CES for their annual business. Though smaller with 44,000 attendees, the show was successful, particularly for smaller companies who gained greater visibility without being overshadowed by tech giants.
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The Four Types of Pivots That Shape Our World
Shapiro identifies four distinct types of pivots that businesses and individuals must master to navigate our rapidly changing world:
The Startup Pivot occurs when entrepreneurs realize their initial vision isn't working and must quickly change direction. Forty percent of founders report pivoting to avoid failure, typically combining rational analysis with gut instinct. The rational approach involves careful thought, consultation with stakeholders, weighing pros and cons, and gathering customer feedback. While data-driven decisions improve success odds, they can slow action. Gut decisions, by contrast, feel right intuitively but may contradict logic. Research shows combining both approaches leads to faster, better decisions, especially for startups with limited business history.
The Forced Pivot happens when external factors fundamentally change a company's operating environment. During COVID-19, businesses across industries had to adapt or close. Yet these pivots often yield unexpected benefits-tech companies reconfigured devices when semiconductor supplies were disrupted, automakers reallocated inventory to focus on high-demand models, and many businesses discovered remote work could maintain productivity while improving employee satisfaction. These do-or-die situations foster innovation by creating an all-hands-on-deck mentality that rewards creative thinking and cross-functional collaboration.
The Failure Pivot transforms disappointment into opportunity. Americans particularly understand that losses and mistakes teach humility, creativity and adaptability-qualities essential for success. Many of Shapiro's best employees have experienced failure and grown from it. Success can breed complacency, but failure fuels ingenuity by forcing us to think differently. America itself was built by leaders who pivoted from failure-Henry Ford's first two auto ventures failed, Thomas Edison found 10,000 ways that wouldn't work before succeeding, and Walt Disney was once fired for "lacking creativity."
The Success Pivot occurs when companies build on existing achievements rather than resting on their laurels. Counterintuitively, these can be the hardest pivots to execute because people resist changing what's already working well. They require visionary leaders who see beyond current success to future opportunities, like Jeff Bezos launching Amazon Web Services while Amazon was already thriving. Often, breakthrough ideas come from outsiders with fresh perspectives-explaining why 80% of American tech unicorns have immigrants in key leadership roles.
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How Technology Companies Mastered the Art of Pivoting
The technology industry has perfected the modern pivot, with many tech giants beginning in completely different fields: Nokia was a paper mill that also made rubber boots and military equipment, Samsung exported dried fish and flour, Nintendo manufactured playing cards (and briefly ran "love hotels"), and YouTube was conceived as a video dating site. Nearly every major tech success story involves pivoting-PayPal, Airbnb, Twitter, Instagram, Netflix, and Slack all dramatically changed their business models.
Even the internet itself pivoted from academic research network to commercial space. Until 1991, the National Science Foundation banned commercial enterprise online, viewing the internet as "an open commons." But telecom companies needed to pivot to make money. In 1994, Wired magazine's digital publication Hotwired pioneered banner ads, with AT&T paying $30,000 for a three-month ad that achieved an astonishing 44% click-through rate. In 1998, Virginia became the first state to establish internet commerce rules, creating legislation for online contracts and electronic signatures that became a template for global e-commerce.
Some pivots emerge from unexpected places. When Eric Ries co-founded IMVU, he initially planned a social network around instant messaging but quickly pivoted based on user feedback to create a 3D virtual world where users could create avatars and buy virtual goods. This pivot transformed IMVU into the world's largest social metaverse platform with 700,000 daily active users across 120 countries. Ries documented this experience in his 2011 book "The Lean Startup," which sold over two million copies and popularized the concept of pivoting in business culture.
American Express exemplifies a successful century-long pivot. Beginning in 1850 as a merger of three express transport companies, the company gradually shifted to financial services-launching a money order business in 1857, introducing Travelers Cheques in 1891, and issuing its first credit card in 1958. The complete transformation came during World War I when President Wilson nationalized domestic express operations, forcing American Express to fully embrace financial services. Today, the company leads in digital payments and banking technology, investing $5.2 billion in 2022 on digital transformation including AI, cybersecurity, and cloud technology.
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Startup Success: The Power of Adaptability
Startups are economic catalysts that add trillions to global GDP and attract billions in venture capital. In the US, small businesses create 44 percent of economic activity and employ nearly half of private sector workers. Tech startups have an outsized impact-representing just 3.8 percent of US firms but paying 8.1 percent of wages and generating 27.2 percent of exports. Their newness is often an advantage, as they aren't bound by established ways of doing business.
Jamie Siminoff's journey with Ring exemplifies the startup pivot. Working from his garage in 2011, he created a Wi-Fi connected video doorbell called DoorBot after his wife complained about not hearing the doorbell. Despite appearing on Shark Tank, no investors bit. Customer reviews were poor, so Jamie pivoted-collaborating with Foxconn to redesign the product, personally responding to complaints, and crucially, renaming it Ring to emphasize security rather than convenience. After exhibiting at CES 2011, securing retail deals, and partnering with police departments to demonstrate crime reduction, Ring sold to Amazon for over a billion dollars in 2018.
Building a new company is challenging-75 percent of startups fail to return investors' capital, and only half of small businesses last five years or longer. But successful startups share one common trait: the ability to embrace change and transform their business. It's not about having the perfect idea initially, but about pivoting repeatedly until finding the right formula. Tech founders are uniquely equipped for this challenge, with a "ninja mindset" that helps them navigate volatile markets, understand customer needs, and capitalize on opportunities at lightning speed.
The most successful entrepreneurs demonstrate key traits: curiosity (asking questions others won't), assertiveness (trusting instincts even when "experts" disagree), resilience (viewing failures as lessons for future success), and commitment (passion that carries them through inevitable challenges). However, even the most resilient entrepreneurs need a supportive innovation environment. Despite large company growth, most states have seen declining numbers of new small businesses according to CTA's Innovation Scorecard. Stifling bureaucracy, unfriendly legal environments, higher taxes, outdated laws, and restrictive immigration policies hamstring today's startups.
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When Survival Demands Change: The Forced Pivot
Forced pivots occur when external forces-economic downturns, technological advancements, or "black swan" events-require businesses to change strategies, products, or entire business models. These moments test leaders' ability to adapt, requiring them to reassess priorities and reposition their organizations. Success demands willingness to embrace discomfort and uncertainty, take calculated risks, and maintain composure rather than defaulting to panic.
Delta Airlines exemplifies the forced pivot, transforming from America's most on-time airline and top revenue generator to facing existential crisis when COVID hit. CEO Ed Bastian led one of the pandemic's most resourceful pivots by focusing on people-limiting furloughs through voluntary leave programs while keeping employee health insurance, repurposing planes to transport medical workers and equipment, and converting their Atlanta museum into a vaccination center. By 2023, Delta rebounded with record $54.7 billion revenue and profit-sharing payouts higher than all US peer airlines combined.
The pandemic forced retailers to pivot to curbside pickup as consumers sought shopping options with minimal in-person interaction. Best Buy exemplified this shift, moving to "contactless curbside service" at over 800 stores in March 2020, their first time offering the service. Despite store closures until mid-June, in-store purchases fell only 6.3% in Q1-less than expected-and rose 5.8% year-on-year in Q2. CEO Corie Barry's leadership prioritized employee and customer safety, protecting employee experience, and ensuring the company emerged vibrant. Best Buy's success stemmed from existing investments in store fulfillment technology and logistics, positioning them to rapidly adapt when "new fulfillment options like curbside pickup were becoming table stakes."
Restaurants survived by pivoting to curbside, carry-out, and home delivery options, supported by services like Grubhub and Uber Eats. Uber's pivot was particularly remarkable-while ride bookings plummeted 80% in April 2020, Uber Eats thrived. Though food delivery had been in Uber's original 2008 pitch deck, it remained a secondary focus until the pandemic. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi's team quickly revamped their app with features like contactless "leave at door" options and eliminated delivery fees to support struggling local restaurants. The result was transformative: Uber Eats drove nearly all of Uber's growth between 2019-2021, with bookings quadrupling from $14.5 billion to $51.6 billion.
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Rising from the Ashes: The Failure Pivot
Failure pivots can be among the most inspiring stories in business-tales of entrepreneurs and innovators who face rejection, make terrible decisions, or watch their efforts collapse before finding the strength to start again. Without people who live by "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again," technology, art, and society would be far worse off. Even Elvis Presley flopped in his first Las Vegas performance, with critics panning his style. In business, failure is often a critical ingredient of future success, especially in America where failure is embraced as a learning opportunity.
Nick Woodman vowed to create a successful business before turning thirty. His first venture, EmpowerAll.com, flopped before launch. His second startup, Funbug, raised millions but crashed during the dot-com bubble, landing on f*ckedcompany.com. Reeling from failure at 26, Woodman took a five-month surfing trip where he conceived a waterproof wearable camera. Borrowing $200,000 from his father, he created GoPro, which eventually went public. But success brought challenges-the company grew too fast, released bug-ridden products, faced lawsuits, and had to lay off staff. Woodman pivoted back to simpler products that made them successful initially, telling Inc., "Just because you're a World Series-winning pitcher doesn't mean you can play quarterback." By 2023, GoPro had regained market trust with award-winning products.
In 2003, three Finnish students founded Rovio, creating mobile games for platforms like Nokia. Despite releasing over fifty games, none became hits, and by 2009, they were nearly bankrupt, forcing them to lay off a third of their staff. The founders spotted an opportunity in Apple's newly launched App Store, which offered global distribution through a single platform. Learning from past failures, they created a game with mass appeal that was easy to play. When a designer brought an image of disgruntled birds to a meeting, Angry Birds was born. Though initially successful only in Finland, the game gradually climbed European charts before being featured on the UK App Store, rocketing to first place and soon conquering the US market. Rovio transformed from near-bankruptcy to a games-first entertainment company, selling 1.8 billion consumer products, producing animated content with billions of views, and releasing movies grossing nearly $500 million.
Travis Kalanick dropped out of college to co-found Scour, a file-sharing service that was hit with a $250 million copyright lawsuit two years later, forcing bankruptcy. Undeterred, Kalanick launched RedSwoosh just a month later, aiming to turn the 33 litigants who sued him into paying customers. The company nearly collapsed in 2001, owing $110,000 to the IRS and facing potential tax evasion charges. After securing funding to pay the debt, Kalanick moved back with his parents, working without salary while his co-founder left. By 2005, RedSwoosh was down to just Kalanick and one engineer (who eventually left for Google). Despite these setbacks, Kalanick persisted until RedSwoosh was acquired by Akamai in 2007 for $23 million. This persistence ultimately led him to co-found Uber in 2009.
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Transforming Success into Greater Achievement
The most significant pivots often involve deciding what to stop doing, even when it's successful. Tech industry leaders who achieve lasting success don't rest on their laurels but constantly innovate and push boundaries. Success-based pivots offer the luxury of time, resources, and knowledge to invest in new growth areas. Panasonic exemplifies this approach, transforming from a consumer electronics giant selling TVs and VCRs to focusing on business-to-business solutions like electric vehicle batteries. CEO Megan Myungwon Lee acknowledges this transition was painful but guided by their philosophy of serving customers first.
Radical success pivots can create entirely new markets, as demonstrated by Amazon Web Services (AWS). In 2003, Amazon executives identified their core capabilities during a retreat at Jeff Bezos's house, recognizing they had built expertise in running reliable, scalable data centers. Though initially met with skepticism when launched in 2006-one analyst called it "more of a distraction than anything else"-AWS attracted 12,000 developers on its first day. Within ten years, AWS reached $10 billion in annual sales, powering nearly a third of the cloud computing market.
Not all pivots require complete directional changes-many successful ones involve smaller adjustments, like 45-degree turns. Hardware-centric companies often execute these partial pivots by adding software, streaming, or subscription services to complement their products. Sonos added Sonos Radio, Peloton shifted toward software-first content accessible without their equipment, Apple ventured into subscription services, and Garmin offers its Connect platform. These expansions create "sticky" customer relationships, enhance hardware value, and tap into the growing software market that now represents nearly one-third of the technology industry with over $150 billion in spending.
While partnerships were once considered optional, the internet has made them essential. Today's executives embrace partnering-especially with innovative startups-as fundamental to growth, with 65 percent of organizations viewing partnerships as essential for future success. Technology's rapid advancement and growing complexity mean partnerships, strategic alliances, and licensing deals can expand markets and produce better products. The automotive industry demonstrates this through partnerships with premium audio companies like Sony and Bose. Modern innovation requires collaboration and intellectual property sharing through licensing and cross-licensing arrangements.
Cooperation between competitors, or "coopetition," is increasingly defining how the technology industry seizes opportunities. Facebook allows 160,000 websites to use its credentials for authentication, helping smaller sites with security while giving Facebook cross-promotion opportunities. Pharmaceutical rivals Pfizer and BioNTech shared development capabilities to create COVID-19 vaccines at record speed. Tech giants like Google/Samsung and Microsoft/Samsung have entered cross-licensing agreements for computing technology, allowing both parties to focus on innovation. In the automotive sector, Ford and GM partnered on transmission development, saving money and freeing engineering talent to pivot toward electric vehicles.
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Technologies Reshaping Our World
The digital transformation predicted by Marc Andreessen in 2011 when he wrote that "software is eating the world" has indeed come to pass. Consumers now live in an increasingly digital, on-demand world with streaming services, food delivery, and customized shopping experiences, while virtually all businesses have established online presences. The COVID-19 pandemic created a pivot point for many technologies, transforming them from conveniences into necessities for daily work and connection.
Cloud computing has transformed business operations by allowing companies to access powerful computing resources without investing in hardware, enabling them to focus on product creation and customer service. During the pandemic, it proved its agility and reliability, supporting remote work models in what was "the ultimate stress test." Now indispensable, cloud computing spending reached $591 billion in 2023, with projections that 50% of global data will be stored in cloud by 2025. Companies like Microsoft saw "two years of digital transformation in two months," while PayPal's CEO described going "from the Flintstones to the Jetsons in nine months."
AI is a transformative "horizontal" technology cutting across every industry, with venture capitalists investing $14.1 billion in generative AI by September 2023. The market for AI hardware, services, and software is projected to reach $300 billion by 2026. CES 2024 showcased AI applications from smart TVs and keyboards to interactive aquariums and digital twins of deceased loved ones. In healthcare, innovations like Withings's BeamO measure vital signs, while AI software predicts post-surgery infections and analyzes pet health from photos. For businesses, the message is clear: if you're not integrating AI into your operations, you're already behind in the age of the AI pivot.
As workforce shortages meet increased service demands, robotics will play a crucial role working alongside humans to enhance productivity. The robotics market is projected to quadruple from 2023 to 2030, reaching $290 billion. CES showcases increasingly advanced robots yearly, from the emotion-expressing Ameca to autonomous restaurant systems, tennis training robots, and EV charging robots that bring power to any parking spot. Robot density has doubled in six years to 150 robots per 10,000 workers globally, with China leading at 392 compared to America's 285. While some jobs will be replaced, robotics creates new opportunities in design, programming, engineering, linguistics, veterinary medicine for robotic pets, agriculture, and education.
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Personal Pivots: Transforming Individual Lives
As a young lawyer working under Ed Day, Shapiro found himself defending the nascent VCR industry against powerful broadcasters and movie companies trying to block this technology. By age twenty-five, he was leading a weekly strategy meeting with consumer groups, retailers, and manufacturers against these Goliaths. Though outgunned, their underdog status forced them to be smarter and pivot quickly. They won battles in Congress and even a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling that recording TV shows was "fair use." These pivots taught crucial lessons: never assume defeat, stay hungry, move quickly even with imperfect information, and challenge the status quo.
Jeff Bezos believes being right requires regularly changing your mind-a principle Shapiro has embraced. Like NFL players, association CEOs start confident but inevitably make mistakes. Those who learn from setbacks find that failure breeds future success. Steve Largent exemplifies this-after being cut by the Houston Oilers, he joined the Seattle Seahawks and became an NFL record-setter through focus on "intangibles." After football, he pivoted to politics as a congressman, then to leading CTIA, the wireless communications association.
Making major business pivots requires careful consideration of multiple constituencies. Leaders have fiduciary duties to owners and shareholders, but must also consider impacts on employees, customers, and communities. Good leaders recognize that employees define their purpose through work, with 90% willing to trade earnings for greater meaning. Consulting customers not only improves decisions but increases acceptance of changes. Thoughtful leaders must also consider environmental and social impacts, partnering with local communities as companies like Stellantis and Bosch have done in Detroit.
Successful people pivot by looking beyond binary choices to find alternative options. This concept dates back to King Solomon, who famously resolved the dispute between two women claiming the same baby by suggesting he'd cut the baby in half-knowing the real mother would relinquish her claim to save the child. President Obama mastered this approach, using the phrase "false choice" some seventy times during his presidency to reframe seemingly contrary alternatives. Tech leaders exemplify this philosophy too: Bill Gates cut through noise to find core solutions, AMD's Lisa Su abandoned traditional development cycles to create entirely new product suites, and Cisco's John Chambers grew the company through unconventional acquisitions that others might have overlooked.
The most important lesson of Shapiro's career is treating people like human beings rather than human capital. He regrets focusing on results for too long before realizing that results naturally follow when you prioritize people. If he could start over, he would establish important personal and professional relationships first. He learned at nineteen that everyone cares deeply about their family-ask about them and they'll see you as caring rather than just a boss. Twenty years later, he learned everyone is different-some thrive on recognition, others want clear rules, incentives, or attention. The more he genuinely cares about people, the better they perform. One final caution: pivots should never mean abandoning your core beliefs or ethical principles.
