I am usually on the side of making fun of faddish terminology, but I think I'll come to the defense of the word here, since others are beating up on it to an unfair extent I think.

"Pivot" does provide a useful word for an actual significant and deliberately engineered event. It highlights a definite difference in the thinking styles of entrepreneurs. It's a useful word to have around.

Used in a vacuous way, "pivot" is used to hide stupid and avoidable blunders, as others have said. It is used to hide lack of foresight and vision under a smokescreen of agility.

Used in a substantive way, "pivot" indicates a very deliberate approach to bootstrapping, which is aimed at creating "fast failures" (another buzz phrase, yes, I know). In the best case, by predefining testable hypotheses and failure criteria, which in turn help you turn a business model into a falsfiable construct, you speed up decision-making.

Distinguished from the non-pivot approach to failure, which I like to call "fumble, stumble, grumble and mumble [an excuse]," pivots are about operating at a higher discovery tempo.

There IS a problem with the whole lean startup idea complex that "pivot" is part of (the other main pieces are "minimum viable product" and "product market fit"), but it isn't the fact that they are vacuous. They are not. They have content.

The problem is that they are bureaucratic and procedural to the point that they stifle creativity with dogma. The champions of the movement also seem to consider it the ONLY way to succeed. I think it is neither sufficient nor necessary. It's a good heuristic for smart people. But I'd rather have smart people operating by a dumb process than vice-versa.

I have to say though, that with every passing week, the movement is turning into more of a cult.