From Crisis to Response: How Start-Up Founders Navigate Uncertainty Through Pivoting

This study investigates how start-up founders navigate uncertainty by adopting pivot strategies, emphasizing stakeholders' active role in shaping these entrepreneurial decisions. Drawing on entrepreneurial action theory and the concept of second-person opportunities, we propose a three-stage conceptual framework (social interaction and second-person opportunity, cognitive evaluation, and action). Based on qualitative data collected through semi-structured interviews and observations involving 20 Italian start-up founders during COVID-19, our findings underscore the relational and socially embedded nature of pivoting, demonstrating how stakeholder interactions substantially shape strategic responses to crises. This research contributes to the existing literature by reconceptualizing pivots as entrepreneurial actions collaboratively constructed through stakeholder engagement, thus offering practical implications for entrepreneurs operating in conditions of radical uncertainty.