The claim at the centre of my Push and Absorb framework is that whatever you are forced to deal with was, at some point, somebody else's decision. The best test of a framework is a real event, so here is one from my own industry, run from each chair in turn.
The event: Rapido moved its cab drivers to a flat subscription in December 2023 and extended it to autos in February 2024, so drivers paid a daily fee and kept the fare. Namma Yatri, on the open network, took no commission at all. Uber followed for autos in February 2025, saying it wanted to avoid a competitive disadvantage, and Ola launched a national version in June 2025 with passes at ₹67 a day.
Rapido's chair: a push
Rapido held the lever, so this is Push. Defined properly: the driver's take-home per ride rises and the platform's revenue per ride changes from a percentage to a flat fee. Drivers are better off, and Rapido pays in revenue per ride, betting it gains in supply.
Traced through the four channels, the change looks strong. Capacity: more drivers are willing to log in. Incentive: a driver who keeps the whole fare prefers the platform that lets them. Expectation: once drivers keep the fare, they will never again accept a large cut without a fight, which makes the change nearly irreversible for Rapido and, as it turned out, for everyone else. Response: rivals have to answer it.
Rehearsing from the other side is where the push shows its strength. From Uber's chair, the cheapest posture was to match, which is what Uber did. A push whose best counter is imitation still leaves the first mover with the head start.
Uber's and Ola's chair: an absorb
For the incumbents this arrived as a condition. Classified, it was slow and permanent: it spread over more than a year, from Rapido's cabs in December 2023 to Uber's autos in February 2025, and no driver was going to ask for the commission back. Slow and permanent is the most dangerous box in the framework, because no single week feels like a crisis while drivers drift.
Traced back, the layer the incumbents could act on was their own fee structure. The posture Uber stated publicly was adapt: follow the industry's shift to avoid a disadvantage. The move to look for would have been turning it around, for example using the change to win drivers back with products an open network cannot easily offer. The public record shows Uber chose to adapt.
The driver's chair: a change that helps
Absorb also applies to good news. For a driver the change is fast and, for now, favourable. The posture that pays is turning it around: running several apps at once and choosing trips on each, now that no platform takes a cut worth staying loyal for. What a driver should watch is the subscription price, which is the new lever the platforms hold.
The owned fleet's chair: the hardest seat
An owned electric fleet, like the one I work on at ZenCabs, recruits from the same pool of drivers. When aggregators let drivers keep nearly the whole fare, the fleet's offer to a driver has to be worth more than that. The change is slow and permanent here as well.
Traced back, the levers a fleet holds are the car itself, which the driver does not have to buy, and the flow of bookings, which depends on utilisation. The posture is adapt: compete on steady earnings from a busy car. That puts even more weight on utilisation, the number I describe in the unit economics of an electric cab fleet.
What running it from every chair shows
Every party's condition was another party's decision, which is the framework's central claim playing out in public. The push worked because the first mover checked, correctly, that the other side's cheapest answer was to copy it. And the expectation channel did the most damage and the most good: it made the change irreversible for the whole industry within about eighteen months.
The open-network side of the story, and why it took hold in mobility first, is in open networks worked first in mobility.
