When to Pivot?

When we try solving the right problem with the wrong solution, it doesn’t have to mean the end

I imagine that anyone in the business of innovation will be able to relate to a deflating reality when an idea, (despite you working your tail off, and there seemingly being huge interest in your product or service), just doesn’t seem to generate the results you had expected.

It is part of the innovator's journey, but it is not much fun.

But what should you do? Down tools and take a holiday, surrender to fate or to providence, or maybe try a different approach?

It's flummoxing when an idea doesn't work, but despite your (understandable) alienation and despair, before plunging this idea firmly into Room 101, might there be a slightly different approach that could still work?

The particular problem you might be attempting to solve can still be valid, but maybe you are trying to solve it with the wrong solution or format.

So you may need to pivot.

What is a pivot?

According to Forbes, a pivot means fundamentally changing the direction of a business when you realize the current products or services aren’t meeting the needs of the market. The main goal of a pivot is to help a company improve revenue or survive in the market, but the way you pivot your business can make all the difference.

The Founder Institute outlines this neatly in this article here (but summarised below)

Here are some examples of pivoting that you might not have guessed are considered a “pivot”:

* Turning one product feature into the product itself results in a simpler, more streamlined offering.

* The opposite of the previous point is also a pivot. One product is turned into a feature of a larger suite of features as part of another product.

* Focusing on a different set of customers by positioning a company into a new market or vertical.

* Changing a platform, say, from an app to software or vice versa.

* Employing a new revenue model to increase monetization. For example, a company might find that an ad-based revenue model is more profitable than a freemium.

* Using different technology to build a product, often to cut down on manufacturing costs or create a more reliable product. There are certainly plenty of other examples of pivoting that are not included here, but at least you now understand that pivoting encompasses numerous directions for a startup.

There are certainly plenty of other examples of pivoting that are not included here, but at least you now understand that pivoting encompasses multiple directions for a startup.

For us, I am obviously referring to the decision we took to pivot the in-person EcoPrint Summit in June, into a virtual Summit taking place 11-12 October. In the run-up to our decision to launch the in-person Summit, Sustainability had come through in all of our research as being hugely important. It's not going away! This is irrefutable. We had already hosted EcoPrint in 2012 but that experience suggested it was too early. It is now 2023, COVID has placed it under the spotlight even more, and all the signs were repointing to this event being more relevant now. Sustainability also shone through in the stories and content at both our Leaders Summit in Geneva last year and our FuturePrint TECH event in Cambridge, plus in all our surveys.

Added to that, all of the indicators in terms of web traffic, downloads, reads, video views, webinar registrations, and survey downloads, pointed to sustainability being the biggest single unaddressed issue. But regardless, we discovered that an 'in person' event was not what the market wanted right now. However, content delivered online in the form of a virtual event could be!

Normal service has not resumed

We may all have assumed and hoped that in 2023, the world would have returned to normal. And to some extent it has, but it has not returned to events in the same way. All events are smaller in footprint with lower attendance than before Covid. In particular, this is the case for trade shows. If we agree that Covid already had a big impact, then the subsequent energy crisis, rising interest rates and continually increasing inflation have compounded these trends further. People are finding it harder and harder to justify leaving their factories and offices as they shift from working on their business to working in it.

Just after lockdown eased we all had the unspent travel and marketing budgets which were largely saved from 2 years of lockdown as well as the additional governmental handouts. Fast forward to now and this has dried up! While the market has hardly collapsed, people and businesses are definitely more prudent and risk-averse.

There is also a considerable strain on OEM marketing departments caused by the bottleneck of events that have jostled for rescheduled dates, cluttering up our calendars and further splitting our attention and budgets.

As well as that the open house event format has certainly grown also. Every business seems to now have its own open day or event which makes a lot of sense, but this further dilutes the market and reduces in-person activity.

With this in mind, an event format that doesn't require travel, unreasonable hotel prices, costly delegate fees, and expensive dinners could be popular right now. So for a much smaller time investment, but which still features great content that one can select and watch whenever it is convenient, from the comfort of their home, it makes a lot of sense.

Buying shift

COVID helped to speed up many changes but a commonly accepted shift is in how buying has also changed. We are now using digital platforms to research products like never before. Events are no longer used to launch new technology in the same way. EG there has been no Drupa since 2016 yet businesses have still found effective ways to launch products regardless.

More people are also involved in the buying process, so the influence, and importance of individual salespeople have also lessened.

Some further interesting changes occurred during COVID, one being that we also learned to exploit virtual technology to great effect. While we all know that a face-to-face meeting is more powerful, and the way to build relationships is built up over time after many meetings etc, a lot can be achieved online. And people are not travelling like they used to.

Online is super useful, particularly in the research phase for buyers and sellers. Storytelling still works online, as does learning. While it doesn't match in-person events with networking, it does offer something different, more inclusive, accessible, open, and global, and the reach is impressive.

During the Covid period, we ran numerous virtual events and amassed registrations from over 20,000 people from 120 countries. While this was admittedly during a time when we would have had the near full attention of the market, this is still pretty impressive and underlines just how important online is. We also found the attendee demographic was more diverse, not just from a global standpoint but also it attracted a younger audience.

So while virtual events may have slipped from their preeminence as a format during the lockdown phase, online has not suddenly become redundant and irrelevant.

Our EcoPrint pivot may have yet to prove itself but it's clear that sustainability is hugely important and given our past experience and success with virtual events we believe we will deliver some great content-rich sessions and a community of people who want to lead sustainable change in their organisations.

If you're interested in more information please complete this form