53 percent of companies pivoted to stay alive in the last 2 years, says Intuit

Inuit says 53 percent of companies “reinvented their business” to survive since 2010. The pivot is a buzz word in Silicon Valley, but may be one of the smartest moves an entrepreneur can make.

A good business owner can’t be afraid of change. Markets change, consumer attitudes change, technologies change, and so companies must also change. The majority of changes small businesses make today come in the form of “overhauling” the product or service. Next in line are changes to infrastructure within the company or changes to the staff.

Pulling the trigger is undoubtedly one of the hardest decisions to make, but you are in good company. Some big names in Silicon Valley have performed the pivot, including Twitter co-founder Evan Williams who originally founded Odeo, a podcasting company. It didn’t take off like Twitter has, but while it didn’t crash and burn, Williams eventually put the Odeo up for sale. That freed him up to focus on Twitter.

Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom was also in the pivot boat. His app Burbn was a location-based app, which included users taking pictures of their surrounding and tagging the location of those pictures. Systrom noticed that people were more interested in the photo features than the app itself. So, he pulled the photo technology out of Burbn and created the very popular Instagram, which recently sold to Facebook for a whopping $1 billion.

Need more pivot inspiration? Check out this infographic from Intuit below:

via: Is Your Small Business in Need of Reinvention? [INFOGRAPHIC]

Kevin Systrom image via LeWEB12/Flickr