The release of Chat GPT nearly 12 months ago, brought about incredible public awareness and perceived understanding of Artificial Intelligence (AI). And don’t get me wrong, like many of my peers I am obsessively studying new releases and different apps leveraging the advances in Generative AI, aspiring to get my head around the technical details and ascend into understanding as to what this means to me, my business, and the businesses of my clients.  Having worked in the technology industry most of my life, I have had a VIP seat to observe some of the preceding technological changes that altered the world and society forever.  And never had the components in the ecosystem required to drive this adoption, come together so rapidly to see this kind of adoption. This left me wondering, with 2024 around the corner, how can businesses effectively pivot in 2024, to make the most of the unavoidable changes that these technologies will bring to our lives and businesses.

The Accelerated Pace of Change

Widespread, mainstream adoption of new technologies typically hinges on four drivers.  Firstly, the technology must reach a point where the utility of the use cases is clear and valuable to a significant percentage of society.  Secondly, access to the technology should be liberated.  Prerequisites such as infrastructure requirements, hardware, or software are typically accessibility barriers to mainstream adoption.  Thirdly, the ‘technological literacy’ that serves as the baseline for understanding and engaging with the new technology should be widely available.  This should consider the question: ‘What is needed for people to effectively understand how to use the technology.’  Lastly, there is of course affordability: Does the intended target audience have the financial means to buy the new technology? 

Typically, once these four drivers in combination reach a tipping point, we see the mainstream adoption of new technologies.  While the exact strategies and tactics employed to facilitate the adoption of new technologies have varied in the past, it is rare for these drivers in any holistic ecosystem, to grow to maturity rapidly and on similar trajectories.

Chat GPT taking the market by storm

The release of Chat GPT (Open AI’s open-source Large Language Model) in November 2022, created optimal conditions for all of these drivers to take effect quickly and with similar time frames, hence the explosive growth.  Each member of society that participates in the digital economy understood the utility (liberation of intelligence), had access to, and could afford the technology (web browser & data access) and possessed the requisite baseline technological literacy (natural language).  Moreover, each member could engage with the technology in line with their own personal level of technological literacy.  This ranged from chat-only engagement to developers building their own new applications addressing different use cases and releasing these applications to subsets of society with a narrower utility focus.

While not the only Generative AI consumer application that has seen the light over the past year, the rate of adoption of Chat GPT over the past 12 months surpassed that of other recent technologies and consumer applications (with the exception of Threads), reaching 100 million active users after only two months.¹

Public perceptions range from being commercially exploitive and cautiously optimistic, to denial, defeatist, and dystopian expectancy.  While many separate articles can be (and continue to be) written about each of the far-reaching implications, one thing is clear: The world will change, again.  And only by sheer force and complete isolation will you be able to escape the impact of these changes.   

This stresses the importance of proactively disrupting ourselves and our businesses to allow rediscovery, reinvention, and ultimately pivoting. 

Growth Mindset is a Key Skill for Effective Pivoting

But where to start?  Change is unavoidable, perhaps just with varying time frames for different pockets of society. Embracing these changes will move from a vaguely compelling, proactive opportunity to a very real survival-based reactive requirement. 

This brings me to pivoting.  The business definition of pivoting entails broadly two things: Firstly, a fundamental shift in business strategy, and secondly remaining grounded in vision and learned facts. 

The second aspect of this definition is of particular importance.  It implies clarity of vision, the North Star.  It also requires learned facts, which inherently means having taken opportunities to experiment, and having recorded outcomes and learnings from those experiments.

The core skill underpinning those experimentation and learning relates to having a growth mindset.  According to www.forbes.com having a growth mindset relates to: A thirst for knowledge, Openness to feedback, Embracing failure, Flexibility and adaptability, and lastly Problem-solving.

I would say that in the future, our ability to survive and thrive will more than ever, depend on having a growth mindset.  When this is fused with our very human ability for introspection and self-reflection it emerges as a powerful catalyst for both personal and organizational change.

This will fuel clarity of vision and ultimately inform what changes in business strategy should be considered. 

Braving the Pivot

According to Eric Reis author of The Lean Startup, to pivot is not just to change.  A pivot represents a type of change designed to test a new fundamental, strategic hypothesis about the product, customer, business model, or engine of growth.

In 2016, Selcuk Atli, CEO and Co-founder of Bunch, introduced his Pivot Pyramid, which outlines five main pivoting areas: customers, problem, solution, technology, and growth.

The opportunity or requirement to pivot can originate from any of these areas.

1. Customers: Changing the customers you are targeting with your product or service.
2. Problem: Maintaining the same customer segment yet changing the problem that you are addressing.
3. Solution: Changing the solution you offer to the problem that you solving.
4. Technology: Changing the technology through which you solve the problem.
5. Growth: When you change the basic growth premise of your business.

A recent article published by the Founders Institute²  (www.fi.co) outlines several steps to take to reduce the risk associated with pivoting.  While these steps are written with the founders of Start-Ups in mind, I believe it provides effective guidance for a wider audience wishing to proactively disrupt themselves and explore opportunities to pivot.

The steps to follow to de-risk your Pivot (adapted for a wider audience):

1. Act quickly.  Understand that the world is changing.  Investigate areas of risk and opportunity sooner rather than later. 
2. Reaffirm your vision and select goals that still align with that vision.  Rediscover your North Star, and consider which goals you can set in the changed landscape that still supports this vision. 
3. Build on what you have.  Identify which aspects of your business are effective now and future-proof.  Cherish these past investments in time and money as a strong foundation and redirect current resources to the new goals.
4. Be customer-obsessed. Your customers are with you in this changed environment. Ensure that you have sufficient and tight feedback loops allowing you to receive and act on feedback in an agile way.
5. Make sure the pivot presents an opportunity for growth.  Do the strategic due diligence on understanding the new opportunity – research everything about your new path and consider robust scenario planning.   
6. Put it in a pivot plan.  Outline the steps you will take.  Include timelines, resource allocations, and success measurement criteria.
7. Get your stakeholders on board.  Communication and change management would be needed across your business to ensure getting the necessary buy-in, and ultimately traction to move forward.
8. Monitor and revise.  Monitoring the impact is critical to ensure that it is delivering the desired results.  If needed, review the results and define how to tweak implementation towards greater impact.

Conclusion

As we stand at the threshold of a new era shaped by rapid technological advancements and evolving societal norms, the journey of Chat GPT over the past year serves as a vivid illustration of the dynamic and transformative power of technology. This journey underscores not just the importance, but the necessity of embracing a growth mindset, fostering introspection, and continuously seeking to rediscover what truly matters in both our personal lives and business endeavors.

The pivot, as highlighted through the foundation laid by Eric Reis and the practical steps outlined by the Founders Institute, is not merely a reactive measure but a proactive strategy to adapt and thrive in an ever-changing landscape. Taking this approach will not only equip us to ride the waves of change but will also steer our course with a renewed sense of purpose and direction, ensuring that we not only adapt to the new world but actively shape it.

In this era of unprecedented change, the ability to disrupt, rediscover, reinvent, and pivot is not just a business strategy; it is a blueprint for resilience and success in the modern world.

If you need the help of an experienced Business and Marketing Strategist to guide you on this journey, I’d love to connect.

References:

1. 100+ Incredible ChatGPT Statistics & Facts in 2023 | Notta
2. https://fi.co/insight/what-pivoting-is-when-to-pivot-and-how-to-pivot-effectively#:~:text=In%20business%2C%20pivoting%20is%20a,%2C%20product%2C%20or%20target%20market.