I'm sure the larger your company is, and the more staff you have and the more money you've taken the harder it is to pivot.
I think the lean startup methodology and pivoting itself, is more focused on a way of doing things before you get all that.
Keep things really small and nimble and don't spend years on something before pivoting. OF course this is useless advice to someone whose spent years on something that looked good and now needs to pivot. But I think that this is an indication that they weren't ready to pivot more when it was easier.
In fact, isn't the whole goal to pivot when you're small and its cheap, and easy?
So, I think the lesson learned here is to be really focused on the metrics & nature of your business so that you know really whether you've got a viable business before you hire people, raise money and get a lot of emotional and other investment in that business you need to pivot away from.
Maybe the lesson is not that Pivoting is hard, but Pivot Early, Pivot Often.
(Not sure about that. Doing my first real pivot here as we speak.)
I don't deny the momentum.... in fact, the momentum of the old product is such a pull, even though everyone's fully committed to the pivot... its a distraction at best and at worst, we spend some work maintaining that product (which is where our funding is coming from now) that could be better spent on the product we're pivoting into.
Just some thoughts, apologies if they're a bit all over the place. Pivoting is hard, I don't deny, pivoting early and often, I think, is the approach that will make it easier, and make pivoting later, when its hard, less needed.