November–December 2019
Article
Organization Science

Pivoting Isn't Enough? Managing Strategic Reorientation in New Ventures

Format:Print

Abstract

New ventures often experience deviations from their plans that oblige them to reorient in pursuit of better fit between their evolving products and their target customers. Yet research is largely silent on how managers explain such changes and justify their ventures in the wake of fundamental redirections in strategy. Ventures initially attain legitimacy and amass resources on the strength of aims that audiences find compelling; later, those early claims can complicate course corrections. To shed light on how ventures manage strategic reorientations, we conducted an inductive, comparative-case of software-based financial advisors. The ventures pursued parallel reorientations and produced comparable end products, but diverged conspicuously in managing audiences during transitions. Our process model, inspired by these differences, proposes a sequence of stratagems that may enable entrepreneurs to alter strategy while portraying faithfulness to enduring aims. Our theoretical framework posits that for ventures, reorientation without penalty may depend on how they anticipate, justify, and stage changes to various audiences.