For more than two years, while writing a book that explores the entire arc of Swift’s career, I dived deep into her decision-making, trying to understand how and why she keeps winning. To be sure, Swift positions herself first and foremost as an artist, and she sometimes downplays her role as a strategist. “I never a single time woke up in the morning and thought, ‘You know what I’m going to do today? I’m gonna go innovate some stuff,’” Swift said while accepting the Innovator Award at the 2023 iHeartRadio Music Awards. “What I did do was try to make the right decision for me.” But despite her protestations, over the years Swift has displayed such a remarkable ability to innovate—and to make sophisticated strategy and marketing moves—that it’s worth trying to draw lessons from her career, the same way we study traditional business visionaries such as Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, and Jeff Bezos.