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Pivot: Eight Principles for Pivoting through Disruption
A stunning new insight into how the most crucial lesson you can learn in today’s challenging business environment is how to change the fundamentals of what you do, rather than carry on fighting a battle that is already lost.
The near destruction of the music industry at the hands of online piracy and its subsequent recovery on the backs of digital streaming platforms is more than just the biggest story of disruption and reinvention of the digital age. It is also a trove of insights on how to confront the metamorphosis we are all facing in dealing with the Covid-19 era, as accelerating tech and economic changes reshape our work, our play and our very minds.
Will Page, Spotify’s first chief economist, extrapolates music’s journey into eight guiding principles for pivoting through the ubiquitous disruption in nearly all industries. Expect the unexpected with transferable lessons coming from Starbucks, Tupperware and even Groucho Marx. The notion of 'Tarzan Economics' ties these principles together: a framework for recognising and acting on disruption, by letting go of the old vine and grabbing onto the new. Page joyfully brings these insights to life and provides a guide for knowing not just how to grab the new vine, but when. He assesses the new dynamics of the 'long tail', identifies friends and foes in the battle for scarce attention and provides a practical tool for discovering the right role for each of us to succeed in this new modern world.
As we emerge from the unprecedented disruption of a global pandemic, Tarzan Economics shows all of us - individuals, organisations and institutions - that if the vine we are holding onto is withering, we can have confidence to reach out for a new one in 2021 and beyond.
The near destruction of the music industry at the hands of online piracy and its subsequent recovery on the backs of digital streaming platforms is more than just the biggest story of disruption and reinvention of the digital age. It is also a trove of insights on how to confront the metamorphosis we are all facing in dealing with the Covid-19 era, as accelerating tech and economic changes reshape our work, our play and our very minds.
Will Page, Spotify’s first chief economist, extrapolates music’s journey into eight guiding principles for pivoting through the ubiquitous disruption in nearly all industries. Expect the unexpected with transferable lessons coming from Starbucks, Tupperware and even Groucho Marx. The notion of 'Tarzan Economics' ties these principles together: a framework for recognising and acting on disruption, by letting go of the old vine and grabbing onto the new. Page joyfully brings these insights to life and provides a guide for knowing not just how to grab the new vine, but when. He assesses the new dynamics of the 'long tail', identifies friends and foes in the battle for scarce attention and provides a practical tool for discovering the right role for each of us to succeed in this new modern world.
As we emerge from the unprecedented disruption of a global pandemic, Tarzan Economics shows all of us - individuals, organisations and institutions - that if the vine we are holding onto is withering, we can have confidence to reach out for a new one in 2021 and beyond.
328 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 1, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
July 30, 2022
I would rate this higher if it was more evenly interesting, and lower if the beginning chapters hadn't hooked me so well. As my friend says, "Pop nonfiction is mostly filler for what should just be a magazine article."
My first month at my new job, Will Page gave us a lecture, promoting this book, and sharing some of the splashy insights. I really enjoyed the lecture, so I picked this up, and read it very slowly over the course of a year.
All in all, this book is best when it gives quotes, graphs, and stories about music, and worst when it purports theories and gives advice. But the good parts really are quite good.
My first month at my new job, Will Page gave us a lecture, promoting this book, and sharing some of the splashy insights. I really enjoyed the lecture, so I picked this up, and read it very slowly over the course of a year.
All in all, this book is best when it gives quotes, graphs, and stories about music, and worst when it purports theories and gives advice. But the good parts really are quite good.
May 8, 2021
Will page has written a nice account on how to view situations , data differently and as he does that he gives beautiful examples from music industory. The changing of landscape when we all would buy CD s to free streaming of music and subsribers paying for a whole range available. This particular band launching their album for free and the music industory finally coming to terms with new digital world( took ten years to a accept). Other industries like newspapers , banking , Healthcare would need to pivot too. Intersting book. While to hold on to our old ways of doing business let us be open to be a SPOTIFY.
May 30, 2021
Loved the central premise but making the book shorter would have made it stronger. My favorite chapters were the first few and then the last one as they were the most thoughtful and succinct. Definitely worth reading but swing quickly through the musings in the middle.
June 10, 2021
Love this book, great case studies, the easiest macroeconomics book and one I wished I could have read when I was an economics student!
June 27, 2021
Whether you are a builder or a farmer (read the book to the end for a great explanation) Will Page’s fantastic book is well worth the focused time that it takes to read. I’ve known the author online thru some shared email groups (we both know Jim Griffin who inspired the book title) so I’ve been anticipating this book since it was announced.
As a historian with a lengthy career in tech and a past of roles at both startups and massive corporations as well as being an amateur economist I found this a very thoughtful and insightful book. And one that challenges many assumptions about economists and economic analysis.
All companies (and individuals) need to prepare for disruption and think about where you individually and as a company want to land.
As a historian with a lengthy career in tech and a past of roles at both startups and massive corporations as well as being an amateur economist I found this a very thoughtful and insightful book. And one that challenges many assumptions about economists and economic analysis.
All companies (and individuals) need to prepare for disruption and think about where you individually and as a company want to land.
August 11, 2026
William Hornaday was a conservationist from the late 19th century who was instrumental in saving the buffalo from extinction. He stated, "Here is an inexorable law of Nature, to which there are no exceptions: No wild species of bird, mammal, reptile, or fish can withstand exploitation for commercial purposes." He stated this as he watched the buffalo’s population plummet from approximately 60 million in 1800, to an estimated 300 in 1884. That's some pretty efficient resource extraction, so how are there still buffaloes on the Great Plains today? Because a few powerful people, such as William Hornaday and President Theodore Roosevelt, decided these animals needed protection and made a stand on their behalf in Washington.
Now let’s ask ourselves, are humans exempt from this inexorable law of nature? Simply because we have opposable thumbs and the possibility to conceive things beyond what is right in front of us, are we able to defend ourselves from a system of commercial exploitation focused on us? Well, let’s check in and see how that’s going. Reed Hastings, then CEO of Netflix, was asked in 2017 who his biggest competitor was, and he responded “we actually compete with sleep…and we’re winning!” Take a second to let that sink in. Netflix’s focus isn’t even on being someone’s choice once they plop down on the couch after a day of work, they’re battling the constraints of human biology to get just one more episode out of you.
So how does this relate to Will Page’s Tarzan Economics? After reading his book and watching a few of his interviews, I don’t think he’s that bad of a guy. He seems to have a knack for using economics and outside the box thinking to come up with innovative solutions to complex problems. However, even though he mentions this quote from Reed Hastings in his chapter ‘Paying Attention’, adding the caution “When Netflix wins more attention, everyone else had better prepare to lose’, he heel turns in his chapter ‘Pivotal Thinking’ by arguing that monopolies are not bad in the digital age (post-1990) because they employ the flywheel effect. He states, “We usually think of badly behaving monopolies in terms of the bigger they get, the more they can abuse the consumer. Businesses that incorporate the flywheel effect often do the opposite - the bigger they get, the more convenience they can provide to the consumer”. On a piece of paper, Will is probably right. That flywheel effect probably does result in added convenience for both parties and the story ends there with a calligraphic THE END written across the page. But we don't live on a piece of paper, we live in the real world in which the stories of monopolies begin, not end, once they corner the market.
Let’s take Google as an example. Will accurately described Google’s rise to dominance around the start of the millennium by describing how the company focused on how little attention a user must pay before finding what they're looking for, while competitors such as Yahoo focused on getting users to spend as much time on their sites as possible. To Will, this is where the story ends. The flywheel is in effect, value has been provided to the consumer, and Google should get a nice, big pat on the back. Now let’s read the rest of the story. The DOJ sued Google in 2023 for monopolistic behaviors, citing evidence that Google was cooking its search results to keep users scrolling for answers longer. These purposefully bad search results prompted users to enter more search queries, which in turn showed more ads, which in turn kept printing money for Google. On top of that, all of these search queries (even those in incognito mode) are kept in a repository for Google to sell to advertisers. But we don't get any sympathy from Will on the sale of our personal data, as he states, “Concerns about the value of our data being traded are real, but the convenience that comes from sharing data is real, too”. I’m not sure if Will thinks that just because he has a book deal that he exists outside this system, but we’re all in this together champ.
So where are we going here? Is the goal of the biggest economy in the world to have its people glued to screens with their personal data available to anyone willing to pay for it? Surely someone can stick their head above the crowd and realize that just because everyone is walking in the same direction doesn't change the fact that there's a cliff right in front of us. I’d really hope that someone like Will Page who’s fluent in today’s digital landscape could be the modern Hornaday or Roosevelt and come up with some creative solutions on how to protect people from exploitative business practices. Unfortunately, as long as he and others like him are categorizing a human’s ability to pay attention as a rivalrous, excludable good, humans of the 21st century may just go the way of the buffalo.
Now let’s ask ourselves, are humans exempt from this inexorable law of nature? Simply because we have opposable thumbs and the possibility to conceive things beyond what is right in front of us, are we able to defend ourselves from a system of commercial exploitation focused on us? Well, let’s check in and see how that’s going. Reed Hastings, then CEO of Netflix, was asked in 2017 who his biggest competitor was, and he responded “we actually compete with sleep…and we’re winning!” Take a second to let that sink in. Netflix’s focus isn’t even on being someone’s choice once they plop down on the couch after a day of work, they’re battling the constraints of human biology to get just one more episode out of you.
So how does this relate to Will Page’s Tarzan Economics? After reading his book and watching a few of his interviews, I don’t think he’s that bad of a guy. He seems to have a knack for using economics and outside the box thinking to come up with innovative solutions to complex problems. However, even though he mentions this quote from Reed Hastings in his chapter ‘Paying Attention’, adding the caution “When Netflix wins more attention, everyone else had better prepare to lose’, he heel turns in his chapter ‘Pivotal Thinking’ by arguing that monopolies are not bad in the digital age (post-1990) because they employ the flywheel effect. He states, “We usually think of badly behaving monopolies in terms of the bigger they get, the more they can abuse the consumer. Businesses that incorporate the flywheel effect often do the opposite - the bigger they get, the more convenience they can provide to the consumer”. On a piece of paper, Will is probably right. That flywheel effect probably does result in added convenience for both parties and the story ends there with a calligraphic THE END written across the page. But we don't live on a piece of paper, we live in the real world in which the stories of monopolies begin, not end, once they corner the market.
Let’s take Google as an example. Will accurately described Google’s rise to dominance around the start of the millennium by describing how the company focused on how little attention a user must pay before finding what they're looking for, while competitors such as Yahoo focused on getting users to spend as much time on their sites as possible. To Will, this is where the story ends. The flywheel is in effect, value has been provided to the consumer, and Google should get a nice, big pat on the back. Now let’s read the rest of the story. The DOJ sued Google in 2023 for monopolistic behaviors, citing evidence that Google was cooking its search results to keep users scrolling for answers longer. These purposefully bad search results prompted users to enter more search queries, which in turn showed more ads, which in turn kept printing money for Google. On top of that, all of these search queries (even those in incognito mode) are kept in a repository for Google to sell to advertisers. But we don't get any sympathy from Will on the sale of our personal data, as he states, “Concerns about the value of our data being traded are real, but the convenience that comes from sharing data is real, too”. I’m not sure if Will thinks that just because he has a book deal that he exists outside this system, but we’re all in this together champ.
So where are we going here? Is the goal of the biggest economy in the world to have its people glued to screens with their personal data available to anyone willing to pay for it? Surely someone can stick their head above the crowd and realize that just because everyone is walking in the same direction doesn't change the fact that there's a cliff right in front of us. I’d really hope that someone like Will Page who’s fluent in today’s digital landscape could be the modern Hornaday or Roosevelt and come up with some creative solutions on how to protect people from exploitative business practices. Unfortunately, as long as he and others like him are categorizing a human’s ability to pay attention as a rivalrous, excludable good, humans of the 21st century may just go the way of the buffalo.
October 5, 2023
Wonderful book!
Great insights!
The learnings from Spotify and the application of technology are not exclusive to the music or entertainment business. Thinking out of the box and with a touch of creativity, this book offers fantastic options to put in practice in many other businesses across several industries!
Great insights!
The learnings from Spotify and the application of technology are not exclusive to the music or entertainment business. Thinking out of the box and with a touch of creativity, this book offers fantastic options to put in practice in many other businesses across several industries!
September 18, 2023
It won’t change your life but Will Page is definitely a smart guy with a eclectic and complete knowledge of economics. He has a good knack for questioning how the world works and how we can apply knowledge to real business examples.
December 26, 2022
Worth reading. A tad long-winded in parts, but a valuable message in the end.
Want to Read
August 24, 2025reviewNone
September 13, 2021
Fantastic book
I am usually wary of "business books" but this was an absolutely fantastic read. It makes a few good points very strongly and succinctly, with a great writing style and a clear focus.
I definitely recommend this for anyone interested in business or the future path of society in fact.
I am usually wary of "business books" but this was an absolutely fantastic read. It makes a few good points very strongly and succinctly, with a great writing style and a clear focus.
I definitely recommend this for anyone interested in business or the future path of society in fact.
October 12, 2021
Good content.
January 23, 2022
A good account fo how neoclassical economics can be overturned to create a platform based business model.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews