PIC No. 97:
• Title: There's Nothing Like This: The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift
• Author: Kevin Evers
• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press (April 8, 2025, 304 pages)
• Management Bucket #2 of 20: The Customer Bucket
Welcome to Issue No. 97 of PAILS IN COMPARISON, the value-added sidekick of John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. This blog features my “PICs”—shorter 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.)
[ ] Anatomy of 55 More Songs: The Oral History of Top Hits That Changed Rock, Pop and Soul, by Marc Myers ("New and expanded now with 58 songs!"). (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: “How CEOs Manage Time,” by Harvard Business School prof Michael E. Porter and Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria. (Read my review.)
To order from Amazon, click on the 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. For more reviews, visit John Pearson’s Buckets Blog and subscribe to Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews.
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