Abstract
Unexpected adversity can mean the downfall of a business—unless managers grasp its serendipitous potential and convert it into strategic advantage. Even then, however, new strategies are not always successful. Prior literature offers limited insight into how serendipity is performed such that it becomes a site of successful strategic renewal. Drawing on extensive archival data on Taylor Swift’s trajectory as a singer, songwriter, and business leader, we show how she grasps disruptions, turns them into episodes of serendipity, and leverages them for strategic renewal. Through a four-phase process, we reveal that her success lies not only in introducing new strategies, but in making them appear, in hindsight, as a coherent trajectory. We present practices of retrospective–prospective performative reframing as a dramaturgical process through which Swift, in her role as a strategic actor, performs renewal and establish strategic coherence. Swift reactivates past reputational frames in the present and reframes them through performance, while simultaneously using musical innovation to steer into a new strategy, thus making renewal feel like continuity. We show that her enduring success derives from her ability to stage new strategies after adversity and retrospectively integrate disruption into a strategically coherent strategic trajectory. This study contributes to research on serendipity, dramaturgical performance, and practices for strategic renewal.