Next!

How do people, companies, and societies reinvent themselves after disruption, burnout, or loss? In Next! (by Joanne Lipman), the author argues that reinvention follows a recognizable, research-backed pattern. Transformation is not a single leap but a repeated sequence—Search → Struggle → Stop → Solution—that applies to career changes, creative breakthroughs, corporate renewal, and healing from trauma. Lipman’s thesis is clear: if you understand this pattern, you can navigate upheaval deliberately rather than stumble through it.

Drawing from neuroscience, psychology, and hundreds of personal stories, Lipman distills a unifying message: reinvention is systemic, cyclical, and available to everyone. The book combines academic research and lived experience—from ad executives who become novelists, to teachers who become entrepreneurs, to survivors who turn pain into purpose—to illustrate that each phase of the cycle has specific signs and tools you can use.

Search: Quiet experiments and curiosity

In the Search phase, you begin gathering possibilities, often without realizing it. You listen, explore, and collect material that will later fuse into insight. Jim Patterson wrote stories before dawn for years before he became a full-time novelist; Chris Donovan sketched shoes during his phone-repair shifts before taking design classes. These small, seemingly aimless explorations are the legitimate first steps of reinvention.

(In psychological terms, this mirrors Herminia Ibarra’s “possible selves” theory: you have to try on new identities before choosing one.) The key is to treat your “dabbling” as data gathering. Each class, side gig, or conversation stocks your cognitive pantry for future insight.

Struggle: The messy middle that creates value

The Struggle phase feels chaotic—many people mistake it for failure—but it’s actually where transformation happens. Lipman cites Dashun Wang’s research showing that success correlates with repeated, reflective experimentation. Katalin Kariko, for example, endured decades of failed mRNA studies that later birthed a global vaccine revolution. The messy middle is not waste; it’s the crucible of learning and adaptation.

In this period, your identity and routines are in flux. You may feel “betwixt and between,” neither who you were nor who you’ll become. Lipman insists this is a feature, not a flaw. Failures accumulate raw information that later crystallizes into pattern recognition—what future chapters call the foundation of “gut instinct.”

Stop: The incubation pause

Every transformation, Lipman shows, includes a pause—sometimes voluntary, often forced—where conscious effort halts and unconscious processes take over. Medical scares, layoffs, sabbaticals, or global events like the pandemic can open this incubation space. Neuroscience shows that creative breakthroughs often occur after disengagement: your brain’s default-mode network consolidates ideas and forges new associations.

Paul McCartney’s melody for “Yesterday,” Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein dream, and Einstein’s thought experiments while cycling are classic examples. They weren’t accidents; they were the product of prior struggle meeting quiet reflection. Lipman’s advice: schedule breaks deliberately—walks, naps, or sabbaticals—so your mind can synthesize the hard work you’ve done.

Solution: The breakthrough or slow build

In the final phase, connections click. Sometimes it’s an “aha!” (like Art Fry’s church-induced Post-it moment) and sometimes it’s gradual assembly (James Patterson refining story structure across manuscripts). Solutions feel sudden but rest on months or years of preparation and reframing. Lipman calls this “earned insight.” Whether in creative work, business, or personal recovery, the pattern of build, rest, and synthesis applies universally.

Supporting themes across the journey

Lipman weaves additional themes through these phases. One is trusting a practiced gut—intuition grounded in experience. Another is the importance of companions and networks, from weak ties that introduce opportunity to mentors who mirror your potential. A third is the idea of moving before you move: nurturing side projects or volunteer work that quietly position you for the next chapter. You also learn to embrace the struggle instead of labeling it failure and to reinterpret forced pauses—like the pandemic—as incubation rather than catastrophe.

Finally, Lipman expands reinvention beyond individuals. Organizations and societies, too, can repurpose the obsolete. 3M’s Post-it Notes, Pfizer’s Viagra, and the Play-Doh pivot all came from failed products reframed by people on the edges. When you start to see every stop, stumble, or surprise as a step in the pattern, you realize that reinvention is not rare—it’s the most natural human process of all.

Before big change comes quiet preparation. Lipman shows that reinvention starts long before your formal decision to pivot. She calls this stage “move before you move”: taking small, exploratory actions that accumulate into readiness. The stereotype of the “big leap” is appealing but mostly myth; reality favors micro‑steps.

Experiment while staying anchored

Examples abound: Joanne Lee Molinaro (the Korean Vegan) blogged recipes long before TikTok made her famous; Jim Patterson wrote novels part‑time; Will Brown’s farm evolved gradually while he worked as an economist. Their transitions were additive, not abrupt. By exploring while still employed, they reduced risk and gathered feedback early.

The power of side projects

Side projects offer psychological and financial safety. Adam Grant’s research supports this idea: people who delay action and build ideas gradually are more creative. Small tests—writing a newsletter, volunteering, launching a micro‑business—produce usable data about what attracts energy from others. Lauren Strayhorn’s “Notedd” newsletter, born during graduate school, grew organically into a business.

From procrastination to incubation

Even procrastination, Lipman suggests, can serve a purpose. Moderate delay allows the brain to collect diverse inputs. Grant calls this “active procrastination,” the period when untended ideas ferment. The lesson: not every pause is avoidance; some pauses are seasoning. Protect low‑stakes exploratory time and track where your curiosity naturally goes.

By the time you officially “move,” you’ve built skills, allies, and proof of concept. Reinvention rarely begins with resignation—it begins with curiosity, tested in the margins of your day.

You’ve felt it before—a decision that “just feels right.” Lipman redefines intuition not as mysticism but as trained pattern recognition. Gut confidence grows from cumulative exposure and reflection. When you study your domain deeply, your brain encodes thousands of cues you later recognize intuitively. Neuroscience supports this: experts can often make faster, more accurate judgments precisely because they’ve internalized structure.

How gut thinking works

Executives from Bezos to Steve Jobs built breakthroughs by trusting informed intuition. They ignored market surveys but not experience; their choices drew upon years of accumulated feedback loops. In fields too complex for full rational analysis, simple heuristics—like the way an athlete catches a Frisbee by locking gaze angle—often outperform over‑analysis. Your aim is to cultivate the right heuristics through repetition.

Building reliable intuition

Lipman’s advice: broaden your input, log decisions, and review outcomes. Keep a record of “pattern wins and misses.” Over time, you’ll identify which instincts consistently pay off. Seek diverse mentors, read widely, and test small bets before escalating commitment. Jeff Bezos validated ideas through prototype experiments before shipping them worldwide. Experience plus reflection equals trustworthy intuition.

When instinct misleads

Intuition unmoored from expertise can be dangerous. Lipman cites the collapse of Quibi: reputations substituted for data, and leaders misread the streaming audience. Gut is powerful only when forged in relevant context. Use intuition as a final tiebreaker, not as your foundation. Confidence without calibration isn’t wisdom—it’s wishful thinking.

In short: earn the right to trust your gut. Intuition becomes dependable when backed by thousands of micro‑lessons you’ve paid attention to.

The most uncomfortable phase of reinvention—the Struggle—is also the most productive. Lipman reframes failure as feedback and persistence as experimentation. The difference between stagnation and breakthrough lies in whether you learn from each misfire. Reinventors convert frustration into information.

Failure as raw material

Dashun Wang’s data reveals that people who modify their approach after each failure, rather than repeat identical attempts, improve success odds dramatically. The same pattern appears in Colonel Sanders’s endless pitches before KFC, or Katalin Kariko’s decades of refining mRNA concepts. Their “failures” were iterative R&D, not dead ends.

Creating your CV of failure

Melanie Stefan’s “CV of failures” provides a structured way to reinterpret setbacks. Listing rejected papers, jobs, and proposals exposes hidden learning: what’s within your control, what’s compatibility mismatch. This reflection clarifies whether to persist or to pivot. Scientists, founders, and creators use it as a diagnostic mirror—truth before triumph.

Intelligent persistence

Persistence by itself is insufficient; persistence combined with strategic adjustment drives breakthroughs. Lipman warns against hollow “fail fast” culture—it glamorizes churn without introspection (Theranos, for instance, exemplified reckless iteration). Real progress shortens the distance between failures while improving their quality. Each test should be cheaper, smarter, and more informed than the last.

If you’re stuck, zoom out: are you gathering better data? The struggle signals movement. Mastering it transforms pain into apprenticeship.

One of Lipman’s most counterintuitive lessons is that stopping is part of progress. A deliberate pause activates hidden neural processes that integrate past efforts into sudden clarity. Whether forced (a layoff, illness, or pandemic) or chosen (a sabbatical, walk, or nap), the Stop phase unlocks pattern recognition and creative recombination.

Why your brain needs idleness

The neuroscience is compelling. When you stop focusing, the default‑mode network links dispersed ideas. John Kounios and Jonathan Schooler’s studies show that 20 percent of our most original insights arrive during non‑work moments—walking, showering, driving. Darwin, Mary Shelley, and Einstein all built daily rhythms with spacious rest precisely to incubate ideas.

Practical rest strategies

• Walks stimulate divergent thinking—creativity jumps up to 60%.
• Short naps and good sleep consolidate memory and prune clutter blocking insight.
• Daydreaming expands associative range; build gentle boredom into your day.
• Structured rest cycles—Tony Schwartz’s 90‑minute focus blocks followed by rest—mimic elite performance patterns.

The pandemic as mass stop

The COVID‑19 crisis acted as a collective global pause. Many used it—consciously or not—to reassess values and work models. Lucy Chang Evans changed careers; Britt and Kari Altizer started a landscaping business. Institutions, too, experimented with hybrid work and four‑day weeks. The forced stop became a generational petri dish for redefinition.

Lipman’s message: integrate intentional “Stop” moments throughout your year. Detachment isn’t avoidance—it’s design. You can’t sprint your way to insight; you must wander there.

Reinvention thrives in conversation. Lipman introduces the concept of the expert companion—a person who reflects your potential more clearly than you can yourself. They’re not a boss or therapist but a thoughtful mirror. These companions help you articulate goals, spot patterns, and stay accountable through your own uncertainty.

Who qualifies as an expert companion

An expert companion can be a spouse (Ina Garten’s husband encouraged her culinary leap), a relative (Danny Meyer’s uncle urged him to open a restaurant), a peer, or even a long‑dormant acquaintance. Research by Mark Granovetter on weak ties reveals why: people outside your inner circle provide novelty. They don’t share your blind spots.

How to engage them

Lipman suggests writing down a list of contacts in different spheres—friends, mentors, former colleagues—and inviting one conversation at a time. When you ask for perspective, you’re perceived as more competent and likable, studies show. Share your goals, then update regularly; accountability doubles completion rates of personal projects.

How they catalyze turning points

The right comment can redirect your entire path. Christopher Handy discovered his flight‑attendant career after a colleague reframed his stage charisma as service talent. Khe Hy, burned out from finance, rebuilt his life around writing and coaching after engaging multiple advisors. Companions convert vague possibility into doable next steps.

You don’t reinvent alone. A well‑chosen mirror—close or distant—helps you see yourself becoming before you fully believe it.

Transformation isn’t always voluntary. In her chapters on post‑traumatic growth, Lipman explores how severe adversity—illness, violence, loss—can destroy and later rebuild identity. Psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun define this as Post‑Traumatic Growth (PTG), a process through which survivors develop new appreciation, strength, and meaning while still living with scars.

Growth and grief intertwined

Lipman’s subjects—like Kay Wilson, who survived an attack in Israel and founded the Yellow Brick Road Project—embody the coexistence of pain and purpose. PTSD symptoms persist, but so does renewed agency. Trauma inverts the standard reinvention pattern: struggle arrives first, forcing search and eventual reframing afterward.

How to enable growth

Lipman identifies stabilizing tools: emotional regulation (through breathing or exercise), narrative restructuring (telling your story anew), and guided reflection with an “expert companion.” Programs like Boulder Crest use education and service to transmute trauma into social contribution. Helping others reframes helplessness as influence.

Cautions about forced positivity

Lipman warns that PTG isn’t moral obligation. Not everyone grows, and no one should be pressured to. The lesson is potential, not prescription. Time and supportive relationships make growth likelier, as longitudinal studies after 9/11 and cancer diagnoses confirm. Healing is nonlinear, but meaning-making is within reach.

The heart of reinvention—personal or professional—is identical: transforming rupture into renewal. Pain can become raw material for empathy, creativity, and social innovation when you’re ready to work with it.

The mature stage of reinvention, whether in a person or an organization, is repurposing: finding fresh uses for existing materials, skills, or knowledge that once seemed obsolete. Lipman’s corporate and entrepreneurial stories—from Play‑Doh to Viagra—illustrate that innovation often comes from reframing failure.

Seeing hidden value

Play‑Doh was a dying wallpaper putty until Kay Zufall, a preschool teacher, realized children could mold it. Pfizer’s erectile‑dysfunction drug began as a failed angina treatment. 3M’s Post‑it came from a weak adhesive rediscovered by a choir singer. In each case, value surfaced when someone asked, “What else could this be?”

Conditions for creative reuse

Lipman finds three enabling factors: non‑hierarchical idea flow (outsiders notice anomalies), low‑cost experimentation, and leadership that listens. Companies like 3M and Google institutionalize such exploration through time allotments for side projects. For individuals, repurposing means mapping your past skills—writing, sales, caregiving—onto new markets or missions.

Necessity as spark

Many reinventions are born of exclusion. Lipman’s “necessity entrepreneurs” (Jane Veron, Kathryn Finney, Paul Tasner) turned systemic barriers—ageism, sexism, racial bias—into motivation to create alternative systems. Their grit, community orientation, and mission focus became competitive advantages. They remind readers that scarcity often incubates innovation.

Whether you’re rescuing a product line, a career, or a personal identity, the lesson holds: nothing you’ve done is wasted. Reframe the purpose, test adjacent possibilities, and lead transformation from the edge inward.