The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift (Part 2 of 2)
PIC No. 97: Pails in Comparison
• Author: Kevin Evers
• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press (April 8, 2025, 304 pages)
• Management Bucket #2 of 20: The Customer Bucket
Welcome to Pails in Comparison, the sidekick of John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. This blog features my “PICs”—short reviews of helpful books—with comparisons to other books in my 20 management buckets (core competencies) filing system.
Part 2 of
2: Listen in on Our Conversation About Taylor Swift & Harvard
Business Review!
In my “Part 1” review of this fascinating book, I asked leaders and readers if they would prefer to read a business
book jammed with marketplace insights (incremental innovation, differentiation,
“a PR dumpster fire,” and more) . . . or would they prefer to read about a
singer/songwriter on the Forbes World’s Billionaires List?
The Good News: You
can read about both in just one book chronicling “The Creative Genius of Taylor
Swift.”
And more Good News: This week, Malia Yim and Paul Palmer joined me for a fast-moving conversation about the book and what we
can learn from the author, Kevin Evers, a senior writer for Harvard
Business Review. And along the way, using examples from Taylor Swift’s
amazing career, we get a peek at more than 25 references to fascinating
articles in Harvard Business Review (see below).
Join us on YouTube for this really fun conversation about
the book, There's Nothing Like This: The Strategic Genius of Taylor
Swift. (Reminder: Read “Part 1 of 2” of my review here.)
Enjoy this fast-moving conversation with Malia Kim, Paul Palmer, and John Pearson as we discuss the hot-off-the-press book from Harvard Business Review Press, There's Nothing Like This: The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift, by Kevin Evers. (And yes—some of us go down very interesting rabbit trails in pursuit of knowledge and coolness!)
For more, read the “Part 1 of 2” review posted on April 11, 2025, over at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. Learn more about five major themes (and
numerous other insights) including:
1. Blind Spots
2. Differentiation
3. Premature Core Abandonment
4. Adjacent Markets (Target’s flop in Canada!)
5. Taylor Swift—The Startup!
In Part 1, I noted
that Kevin Evers, the author of this stunning book about Taylor Swift, comments
on the singer/songwriter’s insights about the customer and strategy. Plus, the
book has more than 25 references to articles from Harvard Business
Review—so you can go even deeper.) Below are just 10 of the HBR articles
mentioned. Enjoy!
#1. HBR article: “Blue Ocean Strategy,” by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne.
“Competing in overcrowded industries is no way to sustain high performance. The
real opportunity is to create blue oceans of uncontested market space.”
#2. HBR article: “The Great
Repeatable Business Model,” by Chris Zook and James Allen. “Differentiation is the essence of
strategy, the prime source of competitive advantages.”
#3. HBR article: “When Growth Stalls,” by Matthew S. Olson, Derek van Bever,
and Seth Verry. “The record shows that if management cannot turn a company
around within a few years, the odds are that it will never again see healthy
top-line growth.”
#4. HBR article: “Why
Target's Canadian Expansion Failed,” by Denise Dahlhoff. Should you follow Taylor Swift’s lead and
venture into what business leaders call “adjacent markets”—or not?
#5. HBR article: “Your
Customers’ ‘Jobs to Be Done,’” by Clayton M. Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon, and David S.
Duncan. “Is innovation inherently a hit-or-miss endeavor? Not if you understand
why customers make the choices they do.”
#6. HBR article: “Three
Leadership Skills That Count,” by Morten T. Hansen (featured in HBR’s “Decision Making
and Problem Solving” category).
#7. HBR article: “Leading
Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail,” by John P. Kotter. “Leaders who successfully transform businesses
do eight things right (and they do them in the right order).”
#8. HBR article: “Reputation and Its
Risks,” by Robert
G. Eccles, Scott C. Newquist and Roland Schatz. Re: The “reputation-reality
gap.” In the chapter, “Castles Crumbled,” Evers notes this: “To some it seemed
that Swift was bending the truth.”
BONUS! Read these two new HBR articles also!
#9. HBR article: "Taylor
Swift and the Strategic Genius of the Eras Tour," by Kevin Evers (Dec. 6, 2024).
#10. HBR article: "The
Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift," by Kevin Evers (March–April 2025 issue of HBR).
PAILS IN COMPARISON: Reading this book reminded me of several other must-read books in the Customer Bucket, plus other buckets/core competencies.
[ ] The
Goal: A Business Graphic Novel (2017), by Eliyahu M.
Goldratt, Dwight Jon Zimmerman (Editor), and Dean Motter (Illustrator). (Read my review.)
[ ] From Impressed to Obsessed: 12 Principles
for Turning Customers and Employees into Lifelong Fans, by Jon Picoult. (Read my review.)
[ ] Winning on Purpose: The Unbeatable
Strategy of Loving Customers, by Fred Reichheld with Darci Darnell and
Maureen Burns. (Read my review.)
[ ] For fun (and more music!), visit “Johnny Be Good”—our
45-blog series on the book, Anatomy of a Song: The
Oral History of 45 Iconic Hits That Changed Rock, R&B and Pop, by Marc
Myers. (Read my review.)
[ ] Beyond Disruption: Innovate and Achieve Growth without Displacing Industries, Companies, or Jobs, by W. Chan Kim and Renée A. Mauborgne. (Read my review.)
[ ] OK…one more HBR article! One of my favorites: “HowCEOs Manage Time,” by Harvard Business School prof Michael E. Porter and Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria.
TO ORDER FROM AMAZON, click on the title title for There's Nothing Like This: The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift, by Kevin Evers. Listen on Libro (8 hours, 35 minutes). And thanks to Harvard Business Review Press for sending me a review copy.
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