Podcast appearances and mentions of alex osterwalder

The Business of Meetings – Episode 250: Revolutionizing Business Models: Insights for the Meetings and Events Industry with Alex Osterwalder We are delighted to welcome Alex Osterwalder as our guest today. Alex is the visionary behind the groundbreaking Business Model Canvas and the founder and CEO of Strategyzer.  Join us as Alex takes us through his journey, from presenting his doctoral dissertation on business models to developing innovative tools, highlighting the power of simplicity and the value of rigorous testing. His Journey from PhD to Strategyzer Alex began his journey with a doctoral dissertation on business models, supervised by Eve Pina. Surprised by the interest his thesis received online, Alex decided to co-write a book with Eve. They self-published their book and crowdfunded the project before crowdfunding became mainstream. Their success laid the groundwork for Strategyzer. Special Offer Mentioned: https://strategyzer.com/business-of-meetings Connect with Eric Rozenberg LinkedIn Facebook Instagram Website Connect with Alex Osterwalder On LinkedIn Strategyzer  

AI Transforming Consulting: Strategies, Ethics, and the Future   The world of consulting is experiencing a seismic shift, largely driven by AI. In this episode, we are joined by Ryan Shanks (Head of Innovation for Accenture EMEA), Alex Osterwalder (CEO of Strategyzer), and Rita McGrath (Columbia Professor, Author and Founder of Valize). They discuss the traditional consulting model, the impact AI has on roles within consulting, and the broader implications on the industry and society. They also delve into the importance of human skills, the evolving business models, the significance of trust in digital transformation, and the shifting landscape of organizational structures and career paths. A must-watch for anyone involved in or interested in the consulting sector.   00:00 Introduction to the Changing World of Consulting 00:40 Traditional Consulting Models and Their Evolution 02:01 Impact of AI on Consulting Roles 02:28 Building and Hiring in the New Consulting Landscape 03:23 AI's Role in Transforming Business Models 05:18 Real-World Examples of AI Integration 14:09 The Need for Continuous Reinvention 18:28 Outcome-Based Consulting and Ethical Dilemmas 24:46 Future of Consulting: Marketplaces and Ecosystems 26:35 The Rise of Small AI-Driven Firms 27:23 Impact on Education and Hiring 28:35 Human Skills in the Age of AI 30:22 Trust and Ethics in AI 31:36 Adapting to Rapid Change 32:53 The Role of Human Sciences 36:09 The Future of Work and AI 43:16 Leadership and Governance Challenges 46:10 Final Thoughts and Reflections   Find Rita: Find Alex: Find Ryan: https://ie.linkedin.com/in/ryanmartinshanks Find The Reinvention Summit:   Innovation, AI, Consulting, Business Strategy, Digital Transformation, Reinvention, Change Management, Future of Work, Organisational Culture, Emerging Trends, Rita McGrath, Alex Osterwalder, Ryan Shanks, Strategic Inflection Points, Ecosystem Thinking, Entrepreneurship, Human-Centric Design, Technology Disruption, Leadership, Continuous Reinvention

Today I'm joined by Alex Osterwalder, Founder and CEO at Strategyzer, for a hugely valuable discussion on how to use business models to be more innovative and what it takes to build an invincible company.   Learn more about Strategyzer and their guided programs: https://strategyzer.com/greatest-business-thinkers     Sponsored by https://www.b2bframeworks.com   Brought to you in partnership with https://awardsinternational.com

SummaryThe conversation explores three main topics: business model resilience, AI, and environmental sustainability. The accessibility and democratisation of AI tools have made a significant impact on innovation and value creation. AI has the potential to propose better value propositions and even replace human managers. The integration of AI tools in consulting processes has resulted in faster results and improved efficiency. However, the development of better value propositions through the integration of different data sources is still a work in progress. In this conversation, Alex and Dominic discuss the potential of AI in innovation and business processes. They explore the idea of using AI to automate customer interviews and the impact it can have on the speed and efficiency of innovation. They also touch on the importance of environmental sustainability and the need for new business models that harmonize profit and impact. The conversation concludes with a discussion on the challenges and opportunities of AI and the importance of regulation.Keywordsbusiness model resilience, AI, environmental sustainability, accessibility, democratisation, innovation, value creation, value propositions, AI tools, consulting processes, data sources, AI, innovation, business processes, customer interviews, speed, efficiency, environmental sustainability, business models, profit, impact, regulationTakeawaysThe accessibility and democratization of AI tools have revolutionized innovation and value creation.AI has the potential to propose better value propositions and even replace human managers.The integration of AI tools in consulting processes has resulted in faster results and improved efficiency.The development of better value propositions through the integration of different data sources is still a work in progress. AI can greatly speed up the innovation process by automating tasks like customer interviews.Businesses need to embrace environmental sustainability and find new business models that harmonise profit and impact.Financial sustainability and resilient revenue models are crucial for the success of a business.Experimentation with pricing and revenue streams is essential for business growth.The rapid pace of change in AI presents both challenges and opportunities for entrepreneurs and innovators.Regulation is necessary to ensure the responsible and ethical use of AI.About Alex OsterwalderAlex Osterwalder is ranked in the top 10 on the Thinkers50 list of management thinkers worldwide. He is passionate about simplifying the complex challenges that today's leaders face. Along with Yves Pigneur, he invented the Business Model Canvas and other practical tools, which are now used by millions of practitioners around the globe.Strategyzer, the company Alex co-founded, provides technology-enabled innovation services to leading organisations, including Colgate-Palmolive, MasterCard and Merck. Alex spends most of his time advising leaders on how to scale their innovation efforts and get results. They already have the assets but lack the organisational design and innovation culture.His books include Business Model Generation, Value Proposition Design, Testing Business Ideas, The Invincible Company, and High-Impact Tools for Teams. Together with his children he created Biz4Kids, a comic book to promote entrepreneurship.Chapters02:22 The Impact of AI on Innovation and Value Creation05:10 The Potential of AI in Proposing Value Propositions10:42 Challenges in Developing Better Value Propositions with AI30:30 Harmonising Profit and Impact: The Future of Business...

 Bio: Pete Newell Pete Newell is a nationally recognized innovation expert whose work is transforming how the  government and other large organizations compete and drive growth.  He is the CEO of BMNT, an internationally recognized innovation consultancy and early-stage tech accelerator that helps solve some of the hardest real-world problems in national security, state and local governments, and beyond. Founded in Silicon Valley, BMNT has offices in Palo Alto, Washington DC, Austin, London, and Canberra. BMNT uses a framework, called H4X®, to drive innovation at speed. H4X® is an adaptation of the problem curation techniques honed on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan combined with the best practices employed by successful Silicon Valley startups. The result is a disciplined, evidence-based, data-driven process for connecting innovation activities into an accountable system that delivers solutions and overcome obstacles to innovation. Pete is a founder and co-author, with Lean Startup founder Steve Blank, of Hacking for Defense (H4D)®, an academic program taught at 47+ universities in the U.S., as well as universities in the UK and Australia. H4D® focuses on solving national security problems. It has in turned created a series of sister courses – Hacking for Diplomacy, Hacking for Oceans, Hacking for Sustainability, Hacking for Local and others – that use the H4X® framework to solve critical real-world problems while providing students with a platform to gain crucial problem-solving experience while performing a national service. Pete continues to advise and teach the original H4D® course at Stanford University with Steve Blank. In addition, Pete is Co-Founder and Board Director of The Common Mission Project, the 501c3 non-profit responsible for creating an international network of mission-driven entrepreneurs, including through programs like H4D®. Prior to joining BMNT, Pete served as the Director of the US Army's Rapid Equipping Force (REF).  Reporting directly to the senior leadership of the Army, he was charged with rapidly finding, integrating, and employing solutions to emerging problems faced by Soldiers on the battlefield. From 2010 to 2013 Pete led the REF in the investment of over $1.4B in efforts designed to counter the effects of improvised explosive devices, reduce small units exposure to suicide bombers and rocket attacks and to reduce their reliance on long resupply chains. He was responsible for the Army's first deployment of mobile manufacturing labs as well as the use of smart phones merged with tactical radio networks. Pete retired from the US Army as a Colonel in 2013. During his 32 years in uniform he served as both an enlisted national guardsman and as an active duty officer. He commanded Infantry units at the platoon through brigade level, while performing special operations, combat, and peace support operations in Panama, Kosovo, Egypt, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is an Army Ranger who has received numerous awards to include the Silver Star and Presidential Unit Citation. Pete holds a BS from Kansas State University, an MS from the US Army Command & General Staff College, an MS from the National Defense University and advanced certificates from the MIT Sloan School and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Bio: Dr Alison Hawks Dr. Alison Hawks is one of the leading experts advancing public sector innovation. A researcher and academic-turned-entrepreneur, she is the co-founder and CEO of BMNT, Ltd., the innovation company that is changing how public sector innovation happens; and Chair of the Common Mission Project UK, BMNT's charitable partner that guides mission-driven entrepreneurial education in the UK. Dr. Hawks co-founded BMNT Ltd with (Ret) Col Pete Newell, the CEO of BMNT, Inc., in 2019 to bring BMNT's proven innovation approach to the UK market. Under her leadership BMNT has become a trusted innovation partner across all single Services of Defence, the Cabinet Office, and the national security community. She has also helped change how real-world government challenges are addressed in the UK, launching the “Hacking for” academic programmes created in the U.S. These courses that teach university students how to use modern entrepreneurial tools and techniques to solve problems alongside government at startup speed. As a result of her efforts, 14 UK universities are offering Hacking for the Ministry of Defence, Hacking for Sustainability and Hacking for Police. More than 480 students have taken these courses, addressing 103 real-world challenges. Dr. Hawks teaches mission-driven entrepreneurship at King's College London, Department of War Studies and at Imperial College London's Institute of Security Science and Technology. She was named the Woman of the Year for Innovation and Creativity at the Women in Defence Awards in 2022. She serves on the Board of Directors of BMNT, leading development of BMNT's innovation education programs while also guiding the integration of BMNT's rapidly expanding international presence. She was previously Director of Research at the Section 809 Panel, a U.S. Congressionally mandated commission tasked with streamlining and codifying defense acquisition. She was also an Assistant Professor at the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, as well as King's College London, Department of Defence Studies where she taught strategy, policy and operations in professional military education. Dr. Hawks' doctoral thesis was in military sociology. She received her Ph.D from the Department of War Studies at King's College London, and her MA in Strategic Studies from the University of Leeds. She holds a BA in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego. She has multiple peer reviewed publications on her research. Interview Highlights 03:50 BMNT 06:20 Serendipity 10:00 Saying yes to the uncomfortable 11:20 Leadership 15:00 Developing a thick skin 20:00 Lessons of an entrepreneur 22:00 Stakeholder success 25:00 Solving problems at speed and at scale 28:00 The innovation pipeline 29:30 Resistance is rational 34:00 Problem curation 38:00 Dual use investments 43:00 Accelerating change 47:00 AUKUS 52:20 AI   Contact Information   ·         LinkedIn: Ali Hawks on LinkedIn ·         LinkedIn Peter Newell on LinkedIn ·         Website:  The Common Mission Project UK ·         Website: BMNT US ·         Website: BMNT UK   Books & Resources ·         Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less: Robert Sutton, Robert , Huggy Rao ·         Value Proposition Canvas ·         Business Model Canvas ·         Hacking for Defense ·         Hacking for Allies ·         AUKUS DIN ·         Impromptu : Amplifying Our Humanity Through AI, Reid Hoffman ·         Huberman Lab Podcast ·         Allie K. Miller ·         Wiring the Winning Organization: Liberating Our Collective Greatness through Slowification, Simplification, and Amplification: Gene Kim, Steven Spear ·         The Friction Project - Bob Sutton, Huggy Rao Episode Transcript  Intro: Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I'm Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. Ula Ojiaku My guests for this episode are Pete Newell and Ali Hawks. Pete Newell is the CEO and Co-founder of BMNT, an innovation consultancy and early stage technology incubator that helps solve some of the hardest problems facing the Department of Defense and Intelligence community. Ali Hawks is CEO of BMNT in the UK and also a Co-founder of BMNT in the UK. In addition to this, she is the Chair of the Board of Trustees at the Common Mission Project, and she Co-founded the Common Mission Project in 2019 and drove its growth as a Startup charity in the UK. Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, my conversation with Pete and Ali, I found it very insightful and I'm sure you would as well. Pete, thank you Ali, thank you so much for being with us on the Agile Innovation Leaders Podcast. It's a great pleasure to have you here.  Pete Newell  Thanks so much for the invite.  Ali Hawks  Yeah. Thank you for having us.  Ula Ojiaku Right, this is the second time ever in the history of my podcast that I'm having two people, two guests. The first time was fun, and I know this one would be as well, and informative. I always start with asking my guests to tell us a bit about themselves. So your background, any memorable happenings that shaped you into the person you are today?  Pete Newell  So I'm a retired army officer. I enlisted when I was 18 and was commissioned when I left college in the mid 80s. I spent most of my career as an Infantryman in tactical units. I spent a great bit of time in the Middle East and other war zones. Towards the end of my career, I ended up as the Director of the Army's Rapid Equipment Force, which is essentially the Skunk Works that was stood up at the start of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to accelerate technology to solve problems that were emerging on the battlefield, that weren't part of something else, somewhere else. And in that three-year journey, it probably exposed me to first and foremost, the speed at which new problems are presenting themselves, not just on the battlefield, but in the rest of the world. It exposed me to the speed at which technology is changing, being adopted and then being adapted for other purposes. So it's almost like chasing technology as it changes is a whole new sport, and it exposed me to  the challenges of large bureaucratic organisations and their inability to keep up with the speed of the changes in order to remain competitive, whether it was on the battlefield or in the commercial markets or something like that. Those epiphanies really drove, first, my decision to retire from the military, because I became addicted to solving that problem, and second, drove the impetus to launch BMNT in 2013. And in fact, you are right square in the middle of our 10th anniversary of being a company. So it really is, I think, a big deal because we started with four people on a driveway in Palo Alto, California, now we're a global company with multiple companies and are grateful, but that's the history of how we got started.  Ula Ojiaku  Congratulations on your 10th anniversary, and it's an impressive background and story. Ali, what about you?  Ali Hawks  So, my background, a little bit different than Pete's, by training I was an academic, so my training and my PhD was in military sociology. I was really interested in understanding people's experiences in the armed forces, both in the US and the UK. That is what my PhD was focused around, my thesis, and I went on to be an academic at King's College London here in the UK. I've also been an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University in the School of Foreign Service. But it wasn't until I then took a job with the US DoD, in something called a Congressional Advisory Panel called the Section 809 Panel, which was tasked with overhauling all of defense acquisition, and that's where Pete and I met. I think one of those formative experiences in my career was meeting Pete and going to the non-profit that Pete started and spun out of BMNT, it's called the Common Mission Project with a really big program, Hacking for Defense, and Steve Blank also Co-founded that as you know, and Joe Felter. I went to an educator course for this program in Fort Belvoir as a part of my job to understand, could we take these types of methods and put them into congressional legislation or DoD regulation as a way to change how people think about problems? And when I met Pete, it was the intersection of all of the things that I really love, academia, entrepreneurship, defense and national security. I went up to Pete and pitched him and said, I want to take this back to the UK and launch it. That was the start of what has been thousands of conversations about the value that we can add both in the US and the UK.  I worked in some law firms before I did my Master's and my PhD, but mainly my career has been in academia.  Ula Ojiaku  Wow. Thanks for sharing. And would you say it was serendipity that made your paths to cross and how are you finding the journey so far?  Ali Hawks  I think, yes, I think it's serendipity. I have a really different life journey than Pete. And I think in my career at the time when I met Pete, I hadn't really found what it is, what I felt like my purpose should be, or hadn't really found passion or joy in my work to that day. I found things I loved, I loved academia and I love teaching, but it just still didn't hit all of those things that you kind of get up every day and are like, this is what I'm meant to do. And I had done a lot of work on reflecting of what that would feel like and what that would look like and the elements it had to have. So by the time I met Pete, it was almost as if someone was flashing a huge sign at me saying, don't miss your turn, this is your turn. So I think serendipity, but also really understanding what it is that I wanted to do and the type of people I wanted to work with and the journey so far. I'll hand over to Pete in a second, but it's been nothing short of incredible. Pete has an amazing reputation, but as a business partner and as a leader, he allows people to truly learn, experiment, make mistakes, and he pulls everyone along by building confidence and empowering people that work for him. So in terms of kind of coming from academia and becoming a researcher turned entrepreneur, it's been the most formative experience of my career. Being able to work along Pete is like being able to work alongside that kind of guide or that guru, and you're like, wow, I can't believe I get to talk to this person every week and learn from them and be in business with them. So that's how it's going for me. Pete, how's it going for you?  Pete Newell You know, Steve Blank and I had a long conversation about serendipity when he and I met 2015 and here's my advice in serendipity. It really is if you have an active curiosity and a willingness to say yes to things that you wouldn't normally, and you're not adverse to taking risk, the chances of serendipity smacking like lightning greatly go up. And then I go back to my first trip to Stanford University in 2011. Well, I was still a military officer and saying yes to a number of things that people asked me to do, and just one conversation after another led to a meeting with two guys who were Stanford graduate school instructors who were writing a book. Those two decided to write a chapter in that book about the work I was doing at the Rapid Equipment Force. Now, when Huggy Rao and Bob Sutton decided to write a book and hire a case study writer who spent six months digging into your life, you learn all kinds of things about yourself and about the world, and when that's followed by a chance coffee with Steve Blank, who had no idea who I was, and I had no idea who he was, that 15-minute coffee turned into a four-hour discussion between the two of us. I typically would not have been at the Fort Belvoir thing that Ali was at, and I think our meeting was very brief, but it was, I think, six months later when I found her in the library at Georgetown University at some social event and we both decided that we wanted her to do something, and we wanted to do something in the UK, and we wanted to see something between allied countries come together. There was no strategy or grand business development, there was nothing that drove those conversations. It was simply in the spur of the moment, the curiosity takes over and you start to say I can see where this might work. Now, Ali will be the first to tell you, it has not been easy, but it has been a privilege to work with her and to continue to work between the two governments and the countries to see absolutely brilliant things done. And so I just say, I come back to, it's that curiosity connected with the desire to, the willingness to accept a little bit of risk, but learning how to say yes to things that you're uncomfortable with and digging just a little bit more. That opens up that opportunity so much more.  Ula Ojiaku I could see, it's evident to me the way Ali was talking about working with you, Pete, and your leadership, I'm wondering, could there have been anything about your military background that has influenced your leadership style as a whole? Pete Newell Yeah, everything in my background does. I can tell you, even growing up as a kid that the way my parents raised me influenced me positively, and negatively in some cases. My military background, I have been fortunate to work for a group of fantastic military leaders, I spent time in the Special Operations community, I spent time working for Stan McChrystal, I spent time in the Pentagon working for brilliant people. I also worked for some of the absolute worst bosses in the entire world, and I rarely say this about people, they were just bad human beings, and I will tell you in many cases what I learned watching a leader in a just really horrible environment influenced me more than watching the really brilliant guys out there. If you think about it, it's really hard to pattern yourself after somebody who is brilliant and driven and successful and kind and they do all that, but I'll tell you what, you can look at somebody who is really a bad boss and say, I don't want to be like them, and it happens in an instant, that I do not ever want to be like that person. That teaches you a lot about the environment that you want to create that people are going to work in. I have some hard areas, and Ali will acknowledge some of them, in the way people are treated in the workplace. Also as a graduate of the Special Operations community, I have strong feelings about how high performing people should be allowed to perform, and also expectations of how they work. I think the military left me with a high degree of not just respect, but you want to hire people, there's a certain degree of dedication to their success, whether they stay in your company or whether they leave, or they go someplace else, whether they're challenged or something else. And I'll tell you, if there was something hard about transitioning from the military to the business world is, in the military, you're given people and you're told to make them successful no matter what. In the business world, you tend to just fire people who are unsuccessful and not invest time and energy in them. I have never been able to make that change, and it's a bit of a struggle sometimes, because in the business world, you can't afford to hang on to people who are subpar performers, if you want to run a high-performance organisation. So if there's one of the things that I have learned is I am challenged in letting somebody go because I see it as a personal failure if somebody fails to thrive in my organisation, that has been built and imprinted by my past. I think Ali has a very different opinion, because she comes from such a great different place. Here's the beauty of it, the work with people like Ali and some of the others, we can argue and disagree and fight like cats and dogs sometimes, but we still love each other, and it is still an absolutely amazing environment to work in. That's really what, if you get it right, that's what life's like.  Ula Ojiaku What's your view, Ali?  Ali Hawks So we clearly have different backgrounds, I think that I was a bit of a late bloomer in terms of leadership style. Being in academia, you're not really in a leadership position because you're responsible for yourself, and in a way, it's a really good test bed for being an entrepreneur, because in academia you have to have such thick skin, because you turn in your peer reviewed journal publications, you turn in your papers and people write back and slash, and no one's trying to make you feel good. In fact, they want to help you, but also they're quite competitive. So that was a really good proving ground for being able to develop the thick skin for critical feedback or any feedback and really all of the knocks that come with being an entrepreneur. What I took into starting BMNT here four years ago was, things that I took from Pete and from the U.S. was really allowing people and high performers to work in the way that they feel best. One of the things I hated when I was younger in certain jobs, and working in law firms is punching your time card at 8 am, and you punch out at 5, and an hour for lunch, and it never felt right that that was the way to measure someone's productivity or to really enhance or empower people. And so the way that I approach it is we consider everyone to be an adult and to do their job, and also to be as curious as possible. So on our Standup this morning, with two new team members coming back into BMNT, one of the things that we agreed on is if no one's asking for time off to be creative or to have a day or two days to read a book that will enhance their knowledge or make them a better BMNTer, then we're failing. If no one has asked for that time by the end of this calendar year. So the way that I really approach leadership is how can I empower, but also invest in every single person, because it's not me delivering the everyday work, it's the people in my company, so they're building it alongside of me. I hire smart young people who will give feedback and we action that feedback. So we change things based on what we get from a 23-year-old, so everyone in the company feels really valued. And I think, learning from Pete, is also being really honest and transparent with everyone in the company when your chips are down and you have to say, guys, this is what's going on, and I found it has built such a strong cohesion in the team that we have now, that this year going into it is the most excited I've ever been about running BMNT. So taking a lot of what I learned from Pete and also my own experiences of feeling really caged, actually, in most of my jobs, and being able to understand that people work in very different ways, and if you allow them to work in the ways that are best for them, you really do get the best of everyone.  Ula Ojiaku That's very inspiring and insightful. Now, there was something Pete said earlier on about you, Ali, walking up to him and sharing the vision that you wanted to take back what BMNT is doing to the UK and so what made you go for it, what pushed you towards that? Ali Hawks Again, it was a lot of work on my part of really understanding what I wanted to do, and when I approached Pete that day, I was really excited and exuberant and I said, I want to take this back to the UK and I want to run it. And Pete is, as you get to know him, he's very calm and he's quiet, and he kind of looked at me and he said, you should talk to some people. And I thought, okay, I'll go talk to people. So I went out and I talked to people and I got Pete on the phone a few weeks later and I said, Pete, this is my dream job, this is what I want to do. And Pete said, prove it, do a Business Model Canvas. So I then hung up the phone, I googled Business Model Canvas, I watched YouTube videos on how to complete it. I was still working at the 809 Panel, so I was getting up really early to talk to people back in the UK, make phone calls, pulling on all of my contacts because I've been in defense and national security for gosh, since 2009, and I was canvassing everyone I knew, I filled out the Business Model Canvas, I sent it to Pete, he was going to be in DC about a week later, and he wrote back saying we should meet. So we then met and had an initial conversation around what it could look like, but it really wasn't until as Pete said in that library at Georgetown for a reception that we came together and having had both time to think and think about what I put down in the Business Model Canvas, but also how we got along, I think, and gelled as business partners, we decided, let's do it. So when we said we didn't have a plan, I had an idea of what we could do, and I have unfailing determination to make things work, and so I just knew, and I think we both knew if we tried it, that something would come of it, and if not, we would learn a lot from it. So we went from there and it took a while before we got a plan, to be honest, but we got there. Ula Ojiaku Well, here you are. Ali Hawks Exactly. Pete Newell You know, if there's one thing I have learned as an entrepreneur is that the plan you thought you were going to have, is never the one you actually execute. So the faster you begin to test it, usually by talking to people and doing things, the faster you will get rid of bad ideas. And it's not about finding the good idea, but it's about creating all the ideas you could possibly have and then killing them off quickly so that you understand the core of the value that you think you're going to deliver. Everything after that is the mechanics of how to build a business. I mean, that's not easy stuff, when you're launching a company, more importantly when you're launching one in a country you haven't been in in a while, but getting there is really about getting the thought process moving and getting people to disabuse you of the notion that every idea you have is brilliant. Ula Ojiaku I mean, I agree setting up a business isn't easy. I can't imagine the additional challenge of setting it up in the defense sector, the Department of Defense in the US, Ministry of Defence here in the UK. What sort of things would you say would be the additional? Do you have to go through hurdles to go through approvals, clearances and all that? Ali Hawks From the MOD experience, it's less about clearances and those types of things, it's more about understanding, winding your way through what feels like a maze, to find the right stakeholders that you can bring together at the right time to make a decision. So while there are individuals that hold budgets and can make decisions, there's a constellation of people around them that need to be aligned in concert with that decision. If you went to a business, of course, you'll have to have a couple of people on board, but the time to sale or the cost to sale is relatively straightforward. When you go into the government, you have a group of highly motivated people, highly mission-driven people who experience the pain of their problems every day, and they are trying to fight just as hard as you are in order to change something for the better. So in the first instance, you have great allyship with your customers, because you have a shared mission, and you're both working towards it, which is fantastic. The second is really trying to understand if that person has the budget and they need to sign off on it, how much do they need to care about it, or is it their chief of staff that needs to really care about it? Or is it their engineer? So I would say the difference is the amount of discovery that you do and doing that stakeholder mapping, is fundamental to success, but also knowing that people change jobs in the civil service and the Armed Forces every few years, that is a critical skill as a business working with the government, that stakeholder mapping and that discovery with your customers, customer development never ends. So I think that that is the longest pole in the tent in terms of finding the right people, and sometimes people say that's the person that has authority, you go talk to them and they say, no, I don't have any authority, so it's really trying to wind your way through the maze to align those key stakeholders. Pete Newell I would add to what Ali said, is that it's like climbing into a very complicated Swiss watch and you need to understand not just how things work, but you need to understand why they work the way they do, and how they work with other things, and then you need to understand who's responsible for making them work and who the beneficiary of the work is, and who possibly might want to make them not work. So, Ali's comment on stakeholder development, it's at the heart of everything you do -- you talk about more sociology and anthropology than it is anything, it truly is understanding why things work the way they do and what drives people to behave one way versus another. Once you figure that out, then you can figure out how to motivate them to behave one way or another, and where you might fit to help them in their daily job or whatever else. But that stakeholder development and understanding who's in charge, who benefits, who doesn't benefit, why something might be counter to something else is so critical in any consulting business, but in particular, if you are trying to get something done inside a government organisation. It, in many cases, it's archaic, but it still operates underneath a very definitive culture that you can map if you've been at it long. Ula Ojiaku So BMNT, you help government organisations to solve hard problems at speed and at scale. Can you expand on this? Pete Newell It's both I think. I go back to my experience, way back in the Rapid Equipping Force and 2010 is first and foremost, there are tens of thousands of problems that prevent the government from doing what it wants to do. The government is challenged, first, in being able to identify those problems; second, in translating those problems into plain English that other people might understand; third, in using that translated thing to find ever bigger groups of people, to then redefine the problem one more time, so that it makes sense for the rest of the world; and fourth, creating the policies and process that will attract people to come to them and work with them to solve those problems fast enough to build a solution before the problem changes so much that the calculus is completely out of whack again. And in all this there's a complicated long answer, but the impedance difference between the speed at which you develop and acknowledge a problem and your ability to get people to work on it, if it's out of sync with the speed at which technology is being adopted and adapted, you will constantly be perfectly solving the wrong problem, and you'll be constantly delivering things that are antiquated before the day they land in somebody's hands, so that's really the speed issue. I go back to what I said about sociology. This is the speed of your ability to get people to come together to work on something, and then the scale is determining, scale how fast, and scale how big. The scale how fast is, I can start to deliver a solution to this, but I know the solution is going to change every 6 months. So I don't need to commit to building tens of thousands of these over a 5-year contract, but I do need to commit to changing what I deliver every 6 months, or this is going to scale to some big end and it goes into a much different system, you have to be ambidextrous about your approach to scale, and unfortunately most procurement laws, both the United States and in the UK are not built to be ambidextrous. They're built to do one thing and one thing very efficiently only. Unfortunately, that's not the way the world works anymore. Ula Ojiaku Any thoughts, Ali? Ali Hawks As Pete said, and as a sociologist, the most often thing, and I think Pete said this a long time ago when we first met, is the government doesn't have a tech adoption problem, it has a people problem, and a lot of our work, a lot of our customers will come and say they have a tech problem, and they have a huge degree of urgency, but the things that get in their way are they have no common language, and they have no repeatable and scalable process in which to think about and work on their problems. And the framework that we developed, the innovation pipeline, is that process for them to do it. It's not complicated, it's methodology agnostic, and so it allows you to develop an entire workforce around a common language of innovating, mission acceleration, agile transformation, whatever you want to do, recognising that people are at the heart of it. The Head of Innovation at UC Berkeley and during one of our Lean Innovators Summit, said something that has stuck with me for several years now, ad he said, and it really hit home with our customers, because sometimes when I first started BMNT here, I was such an evangelist that I forgot to listen to the customer. I was just so convinced that they needed what we had, and I think the customer was telling me something else and I would get frustrated, and when I heard this, it was resistance is rational. When we go into a room with a group of people, we usually have a customer who is an evangelist of ours, or an early adopter, a huge supporter, and they have a couple of other people who feel the same way they do about change and innovation and moving rapidly, and then 70 percent of the team don't feel that same way. So approaching it and really empathising with the customers and understanding resistance is rational, why would they want to change? Things for them work, the way that they have always done, it works, and that is a rational response. So being able to then develop a service where you're connecting with them and saying, I understand that, and that's a rational response, and then using tools, like one of my favourite tools, the Value Proposition Canvas, to really understand, what are the jobs to be done, and the pains and the gains, and when you speak in that type of language, there are so many times that I have seen this kind of aha moment of like, oh, so if I did that, then I wouldn't have to do this anymore, or I would be able to do this different thing. And this is not complicated, these are not complicated tools or processes we're talking about, but the common denominators of it are discipline, consistency, and hard work. And I think, coming off what Pete said, when you want to get pace and speed, you have to be consistent and you have to be disciplined, and people have to understand what you're saying in order to get over that resistance is rational piece. Pete Newell I think Ali's spot on in terms of the problem with the problem. Oftentimes is, we can put a problem in a room and 10 people work on it and get 10 different versions of the problem, and so part of the art that's involved in the process is to get a group of people to agree to a common definition of a problem and use the same words, because many times we're inventing new words. It's new technology, new problem, but the first thing we do is get everybody to say the same thing the same way, and then start to talk to other people about it, because part two of that is you learn that your problem is probably not the right problem, it's a symptom of something else, and that whole process of discovery is a very disciplined, I would say it's a scientific methodology applied to how we communicate with people. You have to get out and test your theory by talking to the right people in a big enough diverse crowd to truly understand that whether you're on the right track or the wrong track. That's hard work, it really is hard work, and it's even harder to get what I would say critical feedback from people in the process who will challenge your assumptions and will challenge your test, who will challenge the outcomes of that. That's what our team does such a great job of, working with customers to teach them how to do that, but listening to them and helping them come together. At the same time, we're looking at the quality of the work and because we're a third party, we can look over the shoulder and say I see the test, and I see the outcome, but I don't think your test was adequate, or I don't think you tested this in an environment that was diverse enough, that you may be headed down the wrong path. The customer can still decide to go with what they learn, but in most cases, at least they're getting honest feedback that should allow them to pause and relook something. Ali Hawks I think for this particular reason, this is why BMNT is a leader in this space, is because the kind of jurisdiction around that front end of the pipeline, of are we making sure that we're choosing from enough problems and we're not stuck with a couple of investments that might be bad, so to speak, really validating that problem to decide, is it worth working on, is this even progressible, does anyone care about it, can it technically be done, does the organisation care about it, before spending any money on investment. Now that front end of the pipeline is gradually becoming a stronger muscle, and I'll speak for the UK, is gradually becoming a stronger muscle because of the work that BMNT has done, and both in the US and the UK, there is incredibly strong muscle memory around experimentation and incubation, which is fantastic. There's a lot of structure around that and frameworks and a lot of common language, which is amazing, because when you have that developed, going back to the beginning to refine before you put into the machine, so to speak, that's where what we call curation, really validating that problem, that's a single most determining factor on whether a problem will transition to an adopted solution. Most of government starts in experimentation and incubation, so they don't get the benefit of de-risking investment in a solution, and they don't necessarily get the benefit of all the learning to expedite that into incubation and experimentation. So I think where BMNT comes out and really owns that area is in that front end of the pipeline, and when you do that front end, you would be amazed at how fast the other part of the pipeline goes through discover incubation experimentation, because you've increased confidence and really de-risked investment in the solution. Ula Ojiaku Thanks for sharing that Ali, would you say you're applying lean innovation amongst other things to the framework you're referring to, or would that be something else? Pete Newell No, I think that it's all part of the process. We use a variety of tools to get to the data we want, and then it's a matter of doing analysis, and this is why Ali's background as an academic is so critical, because she's keen on analysis, and looking at the data and not skewing the data one way or another, and that's an incredibly important skill in this process. Again, this is really the application of a scientific methodology, and you need to be able to do that, but you need to understand how to get the data. So whether it's Lean or it's Scrum or it's some Google tool or something else. We have become really adaptive in the use of the tools and a mixture of the tools to drive a community of people to create the data we need to make an assessment of whether something's going the right direction or not. And that's the beauty of being involved with the Lean Innovation Educators Forum, the beauty of the time we spend with folks like Alex Osterwalder or with Steve Blank or with the folks from the d.school at Stanford or any of those places that are developing tools. It is understanding how to use and adopt the tool to fit the circumstances, but at the end of the day, it's all about creating the data you need to use the analysis that will drive an insight, that will allow you to make a decision. Too often I find people who are just overly enamoured with the tool and they forget that the tool is just a tool. It's about data, insight, and decisions, and you have to get to a decision at some point. Ula Ojiaku Data, insight, decisions. Amazing. So, if we shift gears a little bit and go into your Strategic Innovation Project, SIP, I understand that one of the shifts you're driving in the DoD and MoD respectively is about their approach to involving private investment in defence technology. Could you share a bit more about that? Pete Newell As part of the innovation pipeline, you have to eventually transition out of the discovery phase and at the end of discovery, you should know that you have the right problem. You have a potential solution and you have a potential pathway that will allow you to deliver that solution in time to actually have an impact on the problem. At that point, you start incubating that solution, and if it's a tech or a product, then you're talking about either helping a company build the right thing, or you're talking about starting a new company, and that new company will have to do the thing. Our work in terms of early-stage tech acceleration is really now focused on what we call dual-use technologies. Those technologies that are required to solve a problem in the military, but also have a digital twin in the commercial world. There has to be a commercial reason for the company being built that's actually going to solve the problem, and so as we looked at that, we found really interesting conversations with investors in the United States and then eventually overseas who were looking for a way to help defense get the technologies it wanted, but have portfolios that don't allow them to just invest in a defense technology, and they were looking for an opportunity to engage one, with like-minded investors, but two, in honest conversations about problems that existed in the military and in the commercial world so they can make better decisions about the deployment of their capital to create the right companies. I think it's probably been five years now we've been working on the hypothesis around this. we started to develop a very strong language around dual-use investments in early-stage tech acceleration and adoption, and we started to build new tools inside government programs, as well as new groups of investors and other folks who wanted to be involved. All that was fine in the United States, but then we found it was a slightly different application outside the United States, particularly in Europe, which is not necessarily the most Startup friendly environment in the world in terms of investment, but at the same time, understanding that the United States has an unequalled appetite for technology to the point where that technology doesn't necessarily exist within the United States, nor do the best opportunities to test that technology exist for the United States, so we had to come up with a way that would allow us to do the same type of investigation with our allies, which turns into this incredible opportunity amongst allied nations and companies and vendors and things like that. And I know that from Ali's standpoint, watching NATO DIANA and other programs start, that it is more challenging, it's a different environment in Europe than it is in the United States. Ali Hawks Picking up there and in terms of the way that we think about investment, and what Pete is talking about is a program we run called Hacking 4 Allies. We currently work with Norway and take dual-use Norwegian Startups into our incubator and accelerator called H4XLabs in the US and we help them enter the US defense market and the commercial market, and one of the things that we're starting to see over here is it is a pathway that doesn't really exist in Europe. So when we think about NATO's DIANA, what DIANA is focused on, which is dual-use and deep tech and what they are overly focused on, and I think is correct, is how do you raise investment in the countries themselves to help booster a whole range of effects around being able to raise money within the country? Ultimately, though, and a lot of what DIANA was doing, in terms of the concept and its focus on dual-use and deep tech, was before the invasion of Ukraine, and so at that time before that, I think in terms of the NATO Innovation Fund and thinking about investment and NATO, it wasn't as comfortable with dual-use and investing in dual-use as the US is, not only is the US comfortable, but you have things like we helped a private capital fund, where people feel a great deal of patriotism, or that it's a part of their service to be able to contribute in that way. That feeling doesn't exist, it exists here, but it manifests itself in a different way, and it doesn't manifest itself as let's invest in dual-use technologies to help our defense and national security. So there's different understandings and cultural feelings towards those things. Now, having had the invasion of Ukraine and now the war in Israel and Gaza and now in Yemen, I think that the change is accelerating, insofar as what are the capabilities that we need to rapidly develop within NATO to be able to feel secure on our borders, and what type of investment does that take? Now, US investment in Europe has dropped about 22 percent in 2023, and so they're a little bit nervous about investing in these companies, and so the strength that being able to change the investment paradigm, which is ultimately, the companies that are going to receive the investment from the NATO Innovation Fund and NATO DIANA, they want to develop in the country, but ultimately all of those companies and their investors want them to get to a bigger market, and that bigger market is the US. So, what we are able to do is to connect real dollars, government dollars and commercial dollars, to those companies. We are one of the only pathways outside of export regimes for the Department of International Trade here in the UK. We are one of the only private pathways that has not only been tested and proved, but that we are able to take more companies year on year, take them to the US and prove that model. Now that's really exciting, especially as we see some of the investment declining, because we're able to identify those companies, we're able to connect them to problems that matter that people are trying to solve, develop the use cases, and then help them on the commercialisation side of things in terms of going into a new market. I think that the way that we think about investment in the US from a BMNT perspective, and the US is a little bit different from Europe and the UK, but the exciting thing is now that we have this proven pathway to enhance and accelerate concepts like DIANA and the NATO Innovation Fund. Ula Ojiaku So it sounds to me like it's not just about the localised investment into the innovation, it's also about BMNT building pathways, so European Startups, for example, that want an inroad into the US, maybe vice versa. Pete Newell I think the AUKUS DIN, the Defense Investor Network really is the collection of the US Investor Network, the UK and Australia. All three countries had Defense Investor Networks that had been set up over the last several years and primarily focused on, one, allowing investors to engage other investors about topics that are of common interest when it comes to this dual-use paradigm; and two, being able to engage with people in the government about things the investors were concerned about. I'm very clear when I talk about the Defense Investor Network, it is about defense investors, not about the government's problem. I've had to redefine that multiple times, as this is about enabling investors to be more proactive and participate in building the right kinds of companies, not about the government telling investors what they need to do, or the government telling the investors how they need to do it. It really, it was built from the investor perspective, and then we found is that the investors were prolifically honest about their feedback to senior people in the government, which I think has been hard for people in the government to get that kind of feedback, but when an investor with a portfolio of 30 and 40 companies looks at the government and says, I will never do it the way you just described, and here's why. Until you change that quantity, it makes no sense for us to participate, invest in, do, you'd be amazed. Sometimes it is the first time somebody's been able to articulate why something isn't going to happen, and then people nod their heads, well, I'll quit asking for that, or I'll go back and change something to see what it is we can do. So, we went from Hacking 4 Allies, which started out as a BMNT program with the Norwegians, to Hacking 4 Allies with the UK, Australia, Norway. At the same time, we had set up the Defense Investor Network, but as soon as we started the Allies program in the UK, the UK-based investors raised their hands and said, what you're doing in the United States, we want to do here, and then the same thing happened in Australia. When they made the AUKUS announcement, it just made too much sense to be able to look at, if we really want a free flow of technology and problems across the AUKUS governments, then surely we should be building ecosystems of like-minded people who can help drive those conversations. So it was super, super easy to bring the AUKUS Investor Network together, it was just too easy. The part that I think is not so easy, but we need to do work on is we, those investors need to be fed problems that are of an AUKUS nature, and at the same time, the governments need to listen to the investors when they tell them they have problems investing in companies that aren't allowed to participate in exercise or training or contracting or acquisitions in a different country, and if you really want to make AUKUS a real thing, there are a lot of policies that have to change. There's been a lot of progress made, but I think there's a lot more left to do to, to really get the opportunity to happen. Ula Ojiaku And would you say some of the problems would be related to what government officials would call national security, because if it's a dual-use spec, whilst it has its secular or commercial use, in the military, you wouldn't want other people knowing how you're deploying that technology and the ins and outs of it. So could that be one of the issues here? Pete Newell My definition of national security really touches public safety all the way up to military, so it's both. I think if you dig into it, it touches everything from supply chain, to access, to raw materials, to manufacturing, to education and workforce development, and you name it. There's a paradigm shift that has to happen if we're going to build more things, more often rather than long term ships and things like that, that as allied nations, we have to be able to attack all of the underlying foundational problems, and that's my supply chain, raw materials, manufacturing, and workforce that's necessary for the future. No one country is going to get that fixed all by themselves, and I think, to me, that's the absolute brilliance of what AUKUS should be able to focus on. Ali Hawks I agree, and I think that to being able to co-invest as well, the opportunity for investors to come around and understand what are the opportunities to, not only co-invest and coordinate, but to be able to scan their companies and their deal flow to see where their companies can partner and secure greater work and contracts and scale. So I think that it's a really important initiative in terms of being a steward of an extremely important ecosystem, not only being a steward, but being able to build that ecosystem of support and development. How we look at national security in the UK is really no different than what Pete talked about, and when we think about working with companies and the willingness to work with big tech companies or small tech companies or whatever it is, it's not just simply one transaction where, here's the money and here's your software. So obviously the kind of employment and the skills, but what is the ecosystem around that technology that is necessary? Does it require sensors and chips, and what is it that it requires that's going to bring in multiple different industries to support it, and that's really what the agenda here around prosperity is. How do we invest in these types of technologies and their ecosystems around it to have a more prosperous Britain? So you have a wider spread of skills as opposed to just investing in one thing. I think that's where AUKUS brings three very important allies together to be able to do that individually, but then the option to do it across in terms of the broader strategy and the policy around AUKUS, is a once in a lifetime chance that I think has come up. Ula Ojiaku So I think the key thing here is, this is a space to be watched, there's lots of opportunity and the potential of having the sum being greater than the parts is really huge here. One last question on this topic. So you said deep tech, and with Open AI's launch of ChatGPT earlier on last year, the world seems to have woken up to, generative AI. Do you see any influence this trend would have, or is having, in the military space in the Defense Innovation space. Pete Newell I think the world has woken up and is staring into the sun and is blinded. The challenge with AI in general, and I would say that it's not the challenge, AI has a long way to go, and by and large, folks are really focused on the high end of what AI can do, but people have to learn how to use AI and AI has to learn. What we're not doing is using AI to solve the mundane, boring, time wasting problems that are preventing our workforce from doing the high end work that only a human being can do, and I don't care how many billions of dollars we're pouring into building robots and other things, it's all great, but we still have government people managing spreadsheets of data that, they become data janitors, not analysts, and it is particularly bad in the intelligence world. I quote the Chief Information Officer of a large logistics agency who said data is not a problem, we have tons of data, it's just crappy, it's not tagged, it's not usable, we have data going back to the 1950s, we have no means of getting that data tagged so it's useful. Now, if we put time and energy into building AI products that would correctly tag old data, it'd be amazing what we can do. In the cases that we have helped develop tools with our clients, they'll save anywhere from a million to 300 million dollars a year in finding discrepancies in supply chain stuff, or finding other issues. So imagine if we put that kind of work in place for other people, but free people up to do more, better, smarter things, how much more efficient the use of the government's time and money would be, so that that money and that time could be invested in better things. So when I say, yeah, the AI is out there and people's eyes are open, but they're staring into the sun. They're not looking at the ground in front of them and solving the things that they could be solving at the speed they should be doing it, and unfortunately, I think they're creating a gap where legacy systems are being left further and further behind, but those legacy systems, whether it's finance, personnel, supply chain, discipline, things like that, aren't going to be able to make the transition to actually be useful later on. So I would describe it as an impending train wreck. Ula Ojiaku And what would be, in your view, something that could avert this oncoming train wreck. Pete Newell I think a concerted effort, really just to have the government say we're going to use AI to get rid of as much of the legacy brute force work that our populations are doing so that we can free them up to do other things. Part of this is we're then going to take the money we save and channel that money back into investment in those organisations. Right now, the money just goes away, that's great, you did better, therefore, your budget's reduced. There's no incentive to get better that way, but if you look at an organisation and say, you know, if you can save 10 million dollars a year, we'll give you that 10 million dollars to reinvest back into your organisation to do better and something else. Now, you have some incentive to actually make change happen. Ula Ojiaku Any thoughts, Ali? Ali Hawks I think the exciting thing for us, the way that I look at it in terms of government is that that government enablement to be able to use AI, here they are building large language models for the government based on the data that they have, and there's a lot of excitement around it and there should be. It's a pretty exciting thing to do. I think where we're in a really strong position and what I find really exciting is being able to do what we do best, which is help them understand what is the query and how do you validate that query? So what are the basic skills that you need to be able to interact, and then to be able to retain the skills of critical analysis, so when the answer comes back, you do not take that as the end all be all. It is a tool. So within your decision-making process, it's decreasing the amount of time it takes you to gather a certain amount of information, but just as you would if you were doing a book report, you still have to validate the sources and understanding, and you have to apply your own judgment and your own experience to that packet of information, which is what we all do every day, but it's not really thought about that way. So I think that the way that people are looking at it here is it will be able give us the decision and it will be able to kind of do our job for us, and for some tools, yes, and I completely agree that we need to free up all of the mundane work that hoovers up the time of civil servants here, because it's extraordinary how they're bogged down, and it completely disempowers them and it contributes to low retention rates and recruitment rates. But I think also it's developing the muscle to be able to do that critical thinking in order to leverage human intelligence to engage with artificial intelligence. And I think that's where we are uniquely positioned to do that because that is the bulk of our work on the front end of the pipeline, which is how are you going to validate what you know, how are you going to get the problem statement in order to query what you need to query and then having the judgment and the analysis to be able to look at that answer and make a decision, based on your own human intellect. That's where I see it playing here. I completely agree with Pete, we have people looking into the sun being like LLMs and they're going to solve everything, but you sit, let's say a hundred people down in front of an LLM and tell me how many people know what to ask it, or how to use it and integrate it into their everyday workflow. There's a long way to go, but I feel really excited about it because I feel like we have something so incredible to offer them to be able to enhance their engagement with AI. Ula Ojiaku That sounds excellent, thank you. Just to go to the rapid fire questions. So, Ali, what books have you found yourself recommending to people the most? Ali Hawks So I don't read a lot of work books, in terms of like how to run a company or anything like that, sorry, Pete, but, and I have a 4-year-old and three stepchildren, so I don't actually read as much as I used to, but I have read over in the last few weeks, the book Impromptu by Reid Hoffman about AI, which is great, and I listen to a lot of podcasts on my commute into London, so the Huberman Lab podcast I listen to a lot, but if you're looking for workplace inspiration, I'm afraid I look at Instagram, listen to podcasts, and then I follow Allie K. Miller, who writes a lot about AI, came out of Amazon, and she is fantastic for breaking things down into really bite sized chunks if you're trying to learn about AI, if you don't come from a technical background. Ula Ojiaku Thanks, Ali, we'll put these in the show notes. And Pete, what about you? Pete Newell I will give you two new books. One of them is a fun one, Wiring the Winning Organization written by Gene Kim and Steven Spear. Steve Spear is a good friend of ours, he's been a great mentor and advisor inside BMNT for a long time, I've known Steve since way back in my early days. The other one is by Huggy Rao and Bob Sutton, and it's called The Friction Project, and it's just like you say, it's all about friction in the workplace. I think both of those books tend to lend themselves to how to drive performance in organisations, and I think, knowing all of the authors, that they are phenomenal books, but I think the experience the four of them bring to the dialogue and the discussion of what the future workplace needs to look like and the things we need to solve will all be buried in those books. In terms of podcasts, I'm all over the map, I chase all kinds of things that I don't know. I listen to podcasts about subjects that I'm clueless about that just spark my interest, so I wouldn't venture to pick any one of them except yours, and to make sure that people listen to yours. Ula Ojiaku You're very kind, Pete. Well, because you're on it, they definitely would. Would you both be thinking about writing a book sometime, because I think your story has been fascinating and there are lots of lessons Pete Newell Only if Ali would lead it. So I have picked up and put down multiple proposals to write books around the innovation process within the government and other places, and part of the reason I keep stopping is it keeps changing. I don't think we're done learning yet, and I think the problem writing a book is you're taking a snapshot in time. One of the things that we are very focused on for the military, we talk about doctrine, what is the language of innovation inside the government workplace? It's the thing that we keep picking up, we've helped at least one government organisation write their very first innovation doctrine, the Transportation Security Administration of all places, the very first federal agency to produce a doctrine for innovation that explains what it is, why it is connected to the mission of the organisation, and describes a process by which they'll do it. I think within the Ministry of Defence, Department of Defense, there needs to be a concerted effort to produce a document that connects the outcome of innovation to the mission of the organisation. We call that mission acceleration. We look at innovation as a process, not an end state. The end state is actually mission acceleration. There's probably a really interesting book just to be written about Ali's journey, and I say more Ali's journey than mine because I think as a woman founder of a defence company in the UK, all of the characters in the book are completely unlikely. So somewhere down the road, maybe. Ula Ojiaku Well, I'm on the queue waiting for it, I will definitely buy it. So where can the listeners and viewers find you if, if they want to get in touch? Ali Hawks We're both on LinkedIn, so Pete Newell, Ali Hawks, our emails too are on our various websites, bmnt.com, bmnt.co.uk. Ula Ojiaku Awesome. Any final words for the audience? Pete Newell I'll say thank you again for one, having us. Like I said, it's the first opportunity Ali and I have had to be on a podcast together. Any opportunity I get to engage with the folks and have this conversation is a gift. So thank you for giving us the time. Ula Ojiaku My pleasure. Ali Hawks Yes, Ula, thanks very much for having us on together. It's been great. Ula Ojiaku I've enjoyed this conversation and listening to you both. So thank you so much. The pleasure and the honour is mine. That's all we have for now. Thanks for listening. If you liked this show, do subscribe at www.agileinnovationleaders.com or your favourite podcast provider. Also share with friends and do leave a review on iTunes. This would help others find this show. I'd also love to hear from you, so please drop me an email at ula@agileinnovationleaders.com Take care and God bless! 

Bio   David is known for his ability to deliver inspiring and thought-provoking presentations that challenge audiences to think differently about innovation and product development. His keynotes and workshops are engaging and interactive, with a focus on real-world examples and case studies. David's message is relevant for entrepreneurs, executives, and organizations of all sizes and industries, and he illustrates concepts live on stage to leave attendees with concrete tools and techniques they can use to drive innovation and growth in their own business.   Interview Highlights 02:00 Early Startups 02:45 Dealing with uncertainty 04:25 Testing Business Ideas 07:35 Shifting mindsets 11:00 Transformational leadership 13:00 Desirable, viable, feasible 14:50 Sustainability 17:00 AI 22:50 Jobs, pains and gains 26:30 Extracting your assumptions 27:30 Mapping and prioritisation 28:10 Running experiments   Social Media   LinkedIn:  David Bland on LinkedIn Website:  davidjbland.com Company Website: Precoil YouTube: David Bland on YouTube     Books & Resources   ·         Testing Business Ideas: A Field Guide for Rapid Experimentation (The Strategyzer Series): David J. Bland, Alex Osterwalder ·         Assumptions Mapping Fundamentals Course: https://precoil.teachable.com/p/assumptions-mapping-fundamentals/ ·         The Invincible Company: How to Constantly Reinvent Your Organization with Inspiration From the World's Best Business Models (The Strategyzer Series): Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Alan Smith, Frederic Etiemble ·         Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want (The Strategyzer Series): Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Gregory Bernarda, Alan Smith, Trish Papadakos ·         The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses: Eric Ries ·         Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights- 2nd Edition, Steve Portigal ·         The Mom Test: How to Talk to Customers & Learn If Your Business Is a Good Idea When Everyone Is Lying to You, Rob Fitzpatrick ·         Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers (The Strategyzer Series): Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur ·         The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win: Steve Blank   Episode Transcript Intro: Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I'm Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. Ula Ojiaku   Hello everyone. I'm really honoured and pleased to introduce David Bland as my guest for this episode. He is the best-selling author of the book, Testing Business Ideas, and he's also the Founder of Precoil, an organisation that's focused on helping companies to find product market fits using Lean Start-up, Design Thinking and Business Model Innovation. He's not a newcomer to the world of Agile as well. So, David, it's an honour to have you on the Agile Innovation Leaders Podcast. Thank you so much for making the time. David Bland   Yeah, thanks for inviting me on, I'm excited to be here. Ula Ojiaku   Right. So, where I usually start with all my guests, because personally, I am interested in the story behind the person - are there any happenings or experiences that have shaped you into who you are today? David Bland   Yeah, I think through childhood, dealing with a lot of uncertainty and then ended up going to school for design. I thought I was going to go a different career path and then at the last moment I was like, I want to really dig into design and I think people were sort of shocked by that, with the people around me, and so I really dove into that and then I came out of school thinking, oh, I might join a startup and retire in my mid 20s, because this is a .com craze, everyone was making all this money. Obviously, that didn't happen, but I learned a lot at the startups and I was introduced to Agile really early on in my career at startups because we had to go really fast and we were in a heavily regulated industry so we couldn't break stuff and we had to have kind of processes and everything. I did that for a while and then I realised, wow, there were some people that could learn from my mistakes, and so we kind of switched coasts. So we were near Washington DC for a while, and then we moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, and I started working with companies there, and I was like, well, let me see if I can just really dig in, help people learn how to apply stuff and coach them through it, and that was around 2010 or 2011 or so, and I've been doing it ever since, and I think why I love it so much is that it kind of helps people deal with uncertainty, gives them a process to deal with uncertainty, and at the same time, I have a hard time with uncertainty. So maybe it's kind of a little bit therapeutic for me to help others deal with uncertainty as well. So yeah, I just love what I do. Ula Ojiaku   And so you mentioned you don't like uncertainty, but helping other people deal with uncertainty helps you, that's interesting. Do you want to expand on that? David Bland   I mean, I very much like my routines and everything, and I feel like I come at it from a process point of view. So when I'm dealing with uncertainties, like, oh, what kind of process can I apply to that? So I feel a little better about things, even though there's a lot of stuff outside my control, at least I can have kind of a process. So I feel as if, when I'm dealing with people, I feel all of this anxiety, they're working on a new idea, they're not sure if it's going to be any good or not, giving them a process to work through it together, I don't really tell them if their idea is going to be good or not because who am I to judge their ideas most of the time? It's more about, well, here's a process you can apply to all that stuff you're working through and maybe you can come up to some sort of investment decision on whether or not you should go forward with that idea. So I feel as if my demeanour and everything comes off as someone that you're like, oh, I can talk to this guy and he's actually going to respect me, and so I feel like my style plus the uncertainty bit fits together really well. So I have a style where I come into orgs and say, you have a lot of uncertainty, here's a process, you're going to be fine, we're going to work through it together and it tends to work out pretty well. Ula Ojiaku   What comes across to me is that you give them tools or a process to help them hopefully come to an evidence-based conclusion without you having to share your opinion, or hopefully they don't have to have personal opinions imposing on whatever conclusion that is.   David Bland   Yeah, it's just a process.   Ula Ojiaku   And so what put you on the path to writing the book Testing Business Ideas, I was one of your students at the masterclass you and Alex Osterwalder ran during the covid lockdown, and you mentioned during that session, I don't know if you remember, that you probably went for a retreat somewhere, or you went on a hike as part of the writing process and that Alex gave you a hard time or something, so can you share your version of the story? David Bland   Oh yeah, I mean it was a joy writing with him. I think one of the difficult times for me writing that book…So first Alex approached me writing it and eventually, I mean initially it was just going to be me and then I mean he needed to be involved and so he played a big role strategically in helping me kind of think about the book writing process because I've never written a book like this and then also had it published and also did the whole four colour landscape style, very visual book. It's not that you just write an outline and then you start putting in words, it's a very different process. So yeah, he pushed me a little bit during that process, I would say, he would challenge some of my ideas and say like, are you explaining this in a way that where people can understand, you know? And so I feel as if it was a very productive process writing the book with him. It took about a year I would say. I think the way it came about was it was pretty much from my coaching, born out of my coaching, because I was helping companies with a lot of uncertainty, early stage ideas and they would say well we're now going to have interviews and we're going to do surveys and we're to build the whole thing. And it's like, well, there's other things you could do that are beyond interviews and surveys. And so he and I were continuously talking about this, and it's like, well, if people are only comfortable doing interviews and surveys they're not going to address all their risk, they're going to address a part of their risk, but not, you know, there's so much more they can do. And so, we started thinking about, well, is there a book that we could put that together and give people a resource guide? So, it's more like a textbook or almost something you would read in a university. My editor, I just spoke to him a couple weeks ago, he's like, this is required reading at Stanford now, and some other places in the university programs. And so it's very much like a textbook, you know, but the reason we wrote it was, you know, to help people find a path forward, to find a way to go and de-risk what they're working on. And so I felt it was very ambitious to put that all into a book, and of course, it has some flaws, but I think for the most part, it does the job, and that's why it's been really successful.   Ula Ojiaku   It is, in my experience, very well laid out. It takes a lot of work to distill these ideas into something that seems simple and easy to follow. So I do concur, it's been very helpful to me as well and the ideas. In your book, in the flap, it says, okay, the number one job as an innovator, entrepreneur, a corporation, is to test your business ideas to reduce the risk of failure. And I think you've alluded it, you've kind of touched on that in explaining how your career has gotten you where you are today. But what, in your experience, do you find leaders and organisations missing the most when it comes to testing ideas? David Bland   I think it's hard to unwind it all, because it goes back to how do you become a leader. And so, at least in Western, in the United States anyway, where I do some of my work, I feel as if it's very egocentric, it's very about what I can do and what I know. So there's a progression of becoming a leader where you grow up in an organisation because you have the answers, or at least you're able to convince people you know the answers, and then you're promoted and keep being promoted. And so when I'm coming in and saying, well, we might not know the answers, or we might need to test our way through and find the answers, it almost goes against that whole kind of almost like worldview you've built up or someone has built up over the years where it's about me. It has to be more than just about you as a person. It's like how do you enable leaders around you and how do you create more leaders around you and all that. And so I think where there's contradiction is this idea of, okay, I'm promoted to where I am because I have the answers, but now I want to enable people to test their way through things and find answers, and you almost need a feedback loop there of somebody that's willing to say, look, do you understand how you've unravelled some of this or how you've undermined things by saying, well, I know this is a good idea, so build it anyway. Or, that's not the test I would have ran, I would have done this other thing. You give people almost the benefit of your opinion, but they take it as marching orders, whether you realise it or not, and then it becomes this core of, why am I running tests at all because my leader is essentially going to tell me what to build. And so I think there's just some unpacking a bit of, well, I searched for the right answer in school and I was rewarded for that, and I went into business and I was rewarded for the right answer, and now we're telling you, there might not be a right answer, there are multiple right answers, and different paths and choices. And I think sometimes leaders have a hard time with that because it almost contradicts everything they've done in the past to be successful. Ula Ojiaku   So, what I'm hearing you say David is that in terms of, even before we get testing the ideas, please correct me if I'm wrong, it's that there needs to be a mindset shift, a paradigm shift of, you know, what leadership is all about, it's no longer going to be about the person who knows the way, who knows all the answers and tells people what to do, but moving from that to saying, hey, I recognise I have limits and I may not have all the answers and I empower you all for us to work together to test our way to find what the right path or direction would be. David Bland   Yeah, it's more about your leadership style and accountability. I think you severely limit what an organisation could do if everyone's relying on you for the answers. It's going to be really tough to scale that because if all answers have to come through you, then how do you scale? But also, it goes from transactional to transformational in a way. So transactional is, it's very much like, well, I want you to do something by this date on time, on budget, and on scope, and then basically hold you accountable to doing that, and then there's a very transactional level of leadership there. It's like, I asked you to do this thing, or told you to do this thing, you did this thing, so therefore I trust you. Where I'm trying get a bit deeper is, you know, well can you say, well, how do I empower a team to go find out what needs to be built, or if there's a real problem there, and then have them give me an account of, oh, we're making progress towards that, or you know what, we shouldn't go forward with this because this isn't worth pursuing, nobody has this problem, et cetera, and respecting their wishes or at least having a conversation about that. And so I think it does require a little bit of leadership. Looking at your style, looking at the words you use, looking at how you lead teams through uncertainty, which could be a little different than ‘I need this thing by this date and keep it under this cost and this scope' It's more about, well, we have an idea, we're not sure there's a market for it, can we go test that and see if there is and if it's viable for us and if we can actually do it? And it's a little different leadership style, and I think if you apply a transactional leadership style to trying to lead people through uncertainty, it just backfires, because it's very much like, run these experiments by this date, it doesn't empower the teams to be able to give an account of how they're addressing the risks. It's sort of a learning moment for leaders to say, oh, this leadership style that's worked really well for me in the past may not actually work really well for me here, it may work against me here in trying to drive out the uncertainty of this thing that we're trying to do. Ula Ojiaku   So if I may just build on your response to the question. What, in your experience, has helped, or could help, a leader who's used to, and has been in the past up until now rewarded for that transactional leadership, to make the switch to a transformational leadership? David Bland   I think asking them what they're worried about. I know people try to project confidence like they have the answers, but they don't, and so being able to be open, even if it's just a one-on-one, to say hey we have this thing where we think it might be a new business line or something that we're working on that's relatively new that we haven't done before, which is a lot of my clients, they're trying to do something that they haven't quite done before. It may not be too far away from what they're good at, but far enough away that they're worried, they're worried that it's not going to work. And so I try to get them and talk about what's keeping you up at night, what is worrying you about this, and then usually in the back of my head I'm saying, okay, what can I map that to? So I love the desirable, viable, feasible framing. I use it a lot from design thinking, user centre design. So if they're worried about the customer or there's not enough, you know, there's not really a job to be done there, I map that back to, okay, he's worried about desirability or she's worried about desirability. And if they're talking about, oh, we don't know if people will pay enough for this, or if we can keep costs low enough, you know, that's like I map it back to viability, right? And then if it's more about, I actually don't know if we're organised well enough as a company to do this and really execute on it and I map it back to feasibility. And then from there, it's more like, well how will we go test that since you're worried about it, rather than just build the whole thing and launch and see what happens. And so I try to kind of, I'd be really careful of the words I'm using and I'm trying to coach them into a moment where it's okay, just let's be open and transparent that it's not just about executing a bunch of things and then we're okay. It's more about, you know, what are we worried about and then how do we go address those worries sooner versus later. And so I try not to come at them with a bunch of canvases and a bunch of mapping tools and a bunch of stuff that would make them feel defensive because one, they probably have not had experience with those, and two, it's like, oh, this consultant's more interested in the tools than helping me, you know. So I try to use words that really kind of get at, what are you worried about and then how can we go test that and then kind of back away into the process from there? Ula Ojiaku   Well, it does seem like you apply quite some psychology to the whole approach, because it's really about meeting people where they're at. And I am, just back to your point about viability, desirability and feasibility. There is a school of knowledge, I mean, you are the expert here, so I'm deferring, but there's a school of knowledge that would add also like the sustainability parts to it. Or do you think it's separate from those attributes when you're looking at ideas? David Bland   Yeah. Well, I work on a lot of sustainable projects at the moment. Well, even over the last several years I've been working on companies trying to be more sustainable. So companies are manufacturing phones, they want their phones to be all recyclable materials, they want fully recyclable phones let's say. So I'm working on very cutting edge sustainability projects, but I still don't introduce it as another circle because I'm trying to keep it very simple. And so I know there are different flavours of it. I know some people add sustainability, some people add adaptability, some people add ethics, usability. Before I know it, it's just, you end up with seven circles and different themes, so I really try to keep it very simple. Even Alex and I talk about adaptability, because that was a theme that didn't quite make it into the book, but he talks about it in The Invincible Company, which is the book he wrote immediately after the one we wrote together. So I have ways of addressing those things, but I don't necessarily want to add a bunch of extra themes, because I feel like it's already challenging people with a bunch of ‘ility' words. I noticed they get confused even with the three. No matter how well I explain it, I'll see things like, things that are about building it, and reframed as desirability, and I'm like no, no, that isn't about the customer. I mean yes, of course we have to build what they need, but building it is more about feasibility. So even with the three I see people get confused so I just try to stick to the three as best I can, but basically we go into sustainability projects, still using those three, with sustainability top of mind. So I don't really call it out as a separate theme but I certainly take it into consideration when we're working on those projects.   Ula Ojiaku   Okay, just keeping it simple. Okay, thanks for that, David. So there are some instances where the people will consider probably are outliers to the known proven principles of design thinking, of product development, customer discovery. And I can't remember, I mean, I would have attributed it to the person, but I was just reading a tweet from someone who is known in the product development world and he was saying that if, he wouldn't have guessed that with the advent of or the popularity of Generative AI, that ChatGPT, according to his books, you know, broke all the rules of products, discovery products, development in the sense that there, and I wasn't aware that they were, Open AI was doing lots of market research to say, hey, what do you want from an AI assistant or Generative AI? But within months of releasing it to the public, they gained millions of users. So what's your thought on this? Would you say it was an outlier or is it that there were some principles working in the background that we are not aware of? David Bland   I imagine there's a lot going on we're not aware of. It reminds me of the older conversations about the iPhone. There was this air of, Steve Jobs had this single brilliant idea about the iPhone and then willed it into being and then everyone, it was wildly successful, right? But I look at, even like the first iPhone as, in a way it was kind of a minimum viable product. I mean, the hardware was pretty solid, but the software, the OS was not. I mean, it didn't have really basic stuff that we would expect that we had on other things like Blackberries at the time. You couldn't copy and paste, there were some things that were missing and people viewed it as a toy and they kind of laughed at it, you know, and then they iterated on it. I would say it was about iPhone three or four, by the time they really started to get market fit with it, and then you see, you know, people you wouldn't expect with iPhones with their iPhone. You're like, wait a second, that person has an iPhone. But that took a while, you know. And I think with Open AI, it's kind of a, we're still in the early stages of a lot of this, I feel, and I'm not really sure how it's going to shake out, but I imagine, you know, they seem to be very iterative about how they're going about it, you know. So I don't know how they went about the creation of it at first, but I feel as if at least now they're taking feedback. They're not just building stuff people are asking for, but they're looking at, well these people are asking for this, but why are they asking for it and what are they trying to achieve and how might we achieve that by releasing something that solves for that. And that's kind of your job, right? It's not just to build what people ask for. It's more about getting to the need behind what they're asking for, and there might be a more elegant way to solve for what they're asking for. But there's also some backlash with AI. So I see some things happening where a lot of my corporate clients have just banned it at the firewall, they don't want their employees even accessing it. They want to keep it within the company walls, so to speak, which is going to be kind of challenging to do, although there are some solutions they're employing to do that. I also see people taking it and, you know, interviewing fake users and saying, I can validate my idea because they asked OpenAI and it said it was a good idea, so I don't have to talk to customers. And it's like, okay, so they're taking some kind of persona from people and kind of building up a thing where you interact with it, and it seems very confident in it. It seems very confident in its statements. Like, that's the thing that I've noticed with OpenAI and a lot of this ChatGPT stuff is that it can be like really confidently wrong, but you find security in that confidence, right? And so I do see people saying, well I don't have to talk to customers, I just typed in ChatGPT and asked them. And I said, this is the kind of customer, what would that customer want? And it can literally generate personas that can generate canvases. It can do a lot that makes you seem like they are good answers. You could also just click regenerate and then it'll come up with really confident, completely different answers. So I think there's still a way where we can use it to augment what we do, I'm still a big believer in that, because I think it's really hard to scale research sometimes, especially if they have a small team, you're in a Startup. I think we can use AI to help scale it in some ways, but I think we just have to be careful about using it as the single source of truth for things because in the end it's still people and we're still, find all the tech problems, still people problems. And so I think we have to be careful of how we use AI in Agile and research and product development in general. Ula Ojiaku   Completely agree, and the thing about being careful, because the AI or the model is still trained at the end of the day by humans who have their blind spots and conscious or unconscious biases. So the output you're going to get is going to be as good as whatever information or data the person or persons who trained the model would have. So what I'm still hearing from you if I may use Steve Blank's words would be still get out of the building and speak to real customers. I mean, that could be a starting point or that could be something you augment with, but the real validation is in the conversation with the people who use or consume your products. David Bland   I think the conversations are still important. I think where it gets misconstrued a bit is that, well people don't know what they want, so we shouldn't talk to them. I think that's an excuse, you should still talk to them. The teams that I work with talk to customers every week quite often, and so we want that constant contact with customers and we want to understand their world, we want to find new insights, we want to find out what they're trying to do and trying to achieve, because sometimes that can unlock completely new ideas and new ways to make money and new ways to help them. I think this idea of, well, we can't talk to customers because we don't have a solution ready or we can't talk to customers because they don't know what they want, I feel as if those aren't really the reasons you should be talking to customers. With discovery, you're trying to figure out the jobs, pains and gains, test value prop with them, continue to understand them better. And if you pay attention to your customers, there's this great Bezos quote, right. If you pay attention to your customers and your competitors are paying attention to you, you're going to be fine because you are, they're getting lagging information, right? You're really deeply connected to your customers, and so I just think we've somehow built this culture over time where we can't bother customers, we can't confuse them, we can't come to them unless we have a polished solution and I think that's becoming less and less relevant as we go to co-creation. We go more to really deeply understanding them. I think we have to be careful of this culture of we can't bother them unless we have a polished solution to put in front of them, I don't think that's where we're headed with modern product management. Ula Ojiaku   And someone might be saying, listening to, whilst I've gone through your masterclass, I've read your book, but someone might say, well, do you mean by jobs, pains and gains with respect to customers? Could you just expand on those, please? David Bland   Yeah, if you look at the, so my co-author Alex Osterwalder, if you go back to the book before Testing Business Ideas, there's a Value Proposition Design book where we have the value prop canvas. If you look at the circle in that book, so the tool kind of has a square and a circle, and we usually start with a circle side, which is a customer profile. And with the profile, you're really trying to think of a role or even a person, you're not trying to do it at the org level, you're trying to think of an actual human being. And in that, we kind of break it down into three sections. One is customer jobs to be done. So you can think about, you know, one of the functional, usually functional jobs that tasks are trying to do, you could also weave in, you know, social jobs, emotional supporting, it can get really complicated, but I try to keep it simple. But one way to find out those jobs is by talking to customers, right? Then next are the pain points. So what are the pain points that customers are experiencing, usually related to the jobs they're trying to do. So if they're trying to do a task, here's all the stuff that's making it really hard to do that task. Some of it's directly related, some of it's tangential, it's there, it's like these impediments that are really, you know, these pains that they're experiencing. And then the third one is gains. So we're looking for what are the gains that can be created if they're able to either do this task really well, or we're able to remove these pains, like what are some things that they would get out of it. And it's not always a one to one to one kind of relationship. Sometimes it's, oh, I want peer recognition, or I want a promotion, or, you know, there are some things that are tangential that are related to gains, so I love that model because when we go and we start doing discovery with customers, we can start to understand, even in Agile right. If we're doing discovery on our stories, you know, we're trying to figure out what are they trying to achieve? And then is this thing we're about to build going to help them achieve that? You know, what are the pains we're experiencing? Can we have characteristics or features that address these big pain points they're experiencing? And then let's just not solely focus on the pains, let's also think about delighters and gains and things we could do that like kind of make them smile and make them have a good day, right? And so what are some things that we could do to help them with that? And so I love that framing because it kind of checks a lot of the boxes of can they do the task, but also, can we move the pains that they're experiencing trying to do it and then can we can we help create these aha moments, these gains for them? Ula Ojiaku   Thank you, and thanks for going into that and the definitions of those terms. Now, let's just look at designing experiments and of course for the listeners or people if you're watching on YouTube, please get the book, Testing Business Ideas, there's a wealth of information there. But at a high level, David, can you share with us what's the process you would advise for one to go through in designing, OK yes, we have an idea, it's going to change the world, but what's the process you would recommend at a high level for testing this out? David Bland   At a high level, it's really three steps. The first is extracting your assumptions. So that's why I like the desirable, viable, feasible framing. If you have other things you want to use, that's fine, but I use desirable, viable, feasible and I extract. So, what's your risk around the market, the customer, their jobs to be done, the value prop, all that. Viability is what's your risk around revenue, cost, can you keep cost low enough, can you make money with this in some way, make it sustained? And then feasibility is much more, can you do it, can you execute it, are there things that prevent you from just executing on it and delivering it? So that step one is just extracting those, because this stuff is usually inside your head, you're worried about it, some of them might be written down, some of them might not be. If you're in a team, it's good to have perspectives, get people that can talk to each theme together and compromise and come together. The second part of the process is mapping and prioritisation. So we want to map and focus on the assumptions that we've extracted that are the most important, where we have the least amount of evidence. So if we're going to focus experimentation, I want to focus on things that make a big difference and not necessarily play in a space that's kind of fun to play in and we can do a bunch of experiments, but it doesn't really pay down our risk. And so I like focusing on what would be called like a leap of faith assumption, which I know Eric Ries uses in Lean Startup, it also goes back to probably like Kierkegaard or something, and then Riskiest Assumption is another way you can frame it, like what are the Riskiest Assumptions, but basically you're trying to say what are the things that are most important, where we have least amount of evidence. So that's step two, prioritisation with mapping. And then step three is running experiments. And so we choose the top right, because we've extracted using the themes, we have desirable, viable, feasible. We can use that to help match experiments that will help us pay down the risk, and so I always look for mismatch things. Like you're not going to pay down your feasibility risk by running customer interviews, that doesn't help you whether or not you can deliver it. So making sure that you're matching your risk, and that's kind of where the book plays in mostly because we have 44 experiments that are all organised by desirable, viable, feasible, and then we have like cost, setup time, runtime, evidence, strength, capabilities. There's like a bunch of kind of information radiators on there to help you choose, and so we basically run experiments to then go and find out, you know, are these things that have to be true, that we don't have a lot of evidence to prove them out, are they true or not? And so we start then using this process to find out and then we come back and update our maps and update our artefacts, but that's kind of the three step process would be extract, map and then test.   Ula Ojiaku   Thank you. Would you say that there is a time when the testing stops? David Bland   I would say it never completely stops, or at least hopefully it doesn't completely stop. Even if you're using discovery and delivery, I find that usually in the beginning there's a lot of discovery and maybe a little bit of delivery or almost no delivery, and then as you de-risk you have kind of like more delivery and then a little bit less discovery. And then maybe if you're in a kind of repeatable mode where you're trying to scale something there's a lot of delivery and a little bit of discovery, but where I get really nervous are teams that kind of have a phase or a switch and they say, okay, we've done all the discovery now we're just going to build and deliver. I feel as if that constant contact with customers, being able to constantly understand them, their needs are going to change over time as you scale, it's going to change things, and so I get really nervous when teams want to just kind of act like it's a phase and we're done with our testing, right, we're done with our discovery. And I feel great organisations are always discovering to an extent. So it's just really finding the balance with your teams and with your orgs, like how much delivery do you have to do? How much discovery do you need to kind of inform that delivery? So ideally it doesn't stop, but the percentage of discovery you're doing in testing will most likely change over time. Ula Ojiaku   So in the world of Agile, Agile with a capital A in terms of the frameworks that originated from software development, the role of the Product Owner/Product Manager is typically associated with ensuring that this sort of continuous exploration and discovery is carried out throughout the product's lifecycle. Do you have any thoughts on this notion or idea? David Bland   I think there's always some level of risk and uncertainty in your backlog and in your roadmaps. So people in charge of product should be helping reduce that uncertainty. Now, it's usually not on their own, they'll pair with a researcher, maybe a designer. They might even be pairing with software developers to take notes during interviews and things like that to socialise how they're paying down the risk. But I think if you look at your backlog, you're kind of looking at middle to bottom and saying, oh, there's a lot of uncertainty here, I'm not really sure if you should even be working on these. So part of that process should be running discovery on it, and so I try to socialise it. So if you're in your Standups, talk about some of the discovery work you're doing, if you're in planning, plan out some of the discovery work you're doing, it's just going to help you build this overall cohesive idea of, well, I'm seeing something come in that I have to work on, but it's not the first time I've seen it, and I kind of understand the why, I understand that we did discovery on it to better understand and inform this thing and shape what I'm about to work on, and so I think it helps create those like touch points with your team. Ula Ojiaku   Thank you for that, David. So let's go on. There is, of course, your really, really helpful book,  personally I have used it and I've taken, I've not done all the experiments there, but definitely some of the experiments I have coached teams or leaders and organisations on how to use that. But apart from Testing Business Ideas, are there other books that you have found yourself recommending to people on this topic? David Bland   Yeah, I think there's some that go deeper, right, on a specific subject. So for example, interviews, that can be a tool book itself, right, and so there's some great books out there. Steve Portigal has some great books on understanding how to conduct interviews. I also like The Mom Test, well I don't like the title of the book, the content is pretty good, which is basically how to really do a customer interview well and not ask like, closed-ended leading bias questions that just get the answers you want so you can just jump to build, you know. So there are some books I keep coming back to as well. And then there's still some older books that, you know, we built on, foundationally as part of Testing Business Ideas, right? So if you look at Business Model Generation from Alex Osterwalder, Value Prop Design, the Testing Business Ideas book fits really well in that framework. And while I reference Business Model Canvas and Value Prop Canvas in Testing Business Ideas, I don't deep dive on it because there's literally two books that dive into that. A lot of the work we've built upon is Steve Blank's work from Four Steps to the Epiphany and I think people think that that book's dated for some reason now, but it's very applicable, especially B2B discovery. And so I constantly with my B2B startups and B2B corporations, I'm constantly referring them back to that book as a model for looking at how you go about this process from customer discovery to customer validation. So yeah, there are some ones I keep coming back to. Some of the newer ones, there are some books on scaling because I don't, I'm usually working up until product market fit, you know, and I don't have a lot of growth experiments in there. So there are some books now starting to come out about scaling, but I think if you're looking at Testing Business Ideas and saying, oh, there's something here and it kind of covers it, but I want to go a lot deeper, then it's finding complimentary books that help you go deeper on a specific thing, because Testing Business Ideas are more like a library and a reference guide and a process of how to go through it. It would have been like two or three times in length if we'd gone really, really deep on everything, so I think 200 pages of experiments was a pretty good quantity there. And so I'm often, I'm referring books that go deeper on a specific thing where people want to learn more.   Ula Ojiaku   Thank you for that. So if the audience, they've listened to what you have to say and they're like, I think I need to speak with David, how can they reach you? David Bland   Yeah, I mean, davidjbland.com is a great place to go, that's me, you can read about me, you can watch videos on me presenting. I have, you know, videos of me presenting at conferences, but also, there's a YouTube channel you can go to where I have some of my webinars that are free to watch as well, and just little coaching videos I make where I'm like, hey, I have a team that's really struggling with this concept and I just kind of make a quick YouTube video helping people out to say this is how I'm addressing this with, you know, with a team. Also Precoil, P-R-E-C-O-I-L, that's my company, and so there's a lot of great content there as well. And then just in general social media, although I have to say I'm pulling back on social media a little bit. So, I would say for the most part LinkedIn is a great place to find me, I'm usually posting memes about customer discovery and videos and things just trying to help people, like make you laugh and educate you, and so LinkedIn, surprisingly, I don't think I'd ever say like, oh, come check me out on LinkedIn, you know, five or ten years ago, but now that's where I spend a lot of my time, and I feel like that's where my customers are and that's where I can help them, so yeah, I end up spending a lot of time on LinkedIn too.   Ula Ojiaku   Yeah, some of your memes there like, I mean, how do I put it, just gets me up in stitches. Yeah, I don't know how you find them or do you commission actors to do some of them, but yeah, it's good. So yeah, so LinkedIn, social media is the main place, and your websites, those would be in the show notes. I also heard you do have a course, an online course. Can you tell us about that? David Bland   Yeah, this summer, I finally found some space to put together my thoughts into an Assumptions Mapping Course. So that is on Teachable. I'm going to be building it out with more courses, but I've just had enough people look at that two by two and read the book and say, I think I know how to facilitate this, but I'm not sure, and so I literally just went like step by step with a with a case study and it has some exercises as well where you can see how to set up the agenda, how to do the pre work for it, who you need in the room for it, how to facilitate it, what traps to look out for because sometimes, you know, you're trying to facilitate this priority sort of exercise and then things go wry. So I talked about some of the things I've learned over the years facilitating it and then what to do a little bit after. So yeah, it's a pretty just like bite-sized hands-on oh, I want to learn this and I want to go try with the team or do it myself. So yeah, I do have a new course that I launched that just walks people step by step like I would be coaching them. Ula Ojiaku OK, and do you mind mentioning out loud the website, is it precoil.teachable.com and they can find your Assumptions Mapping Fundamentals Course there?   David Bland   Correct. It's on precoil.teachable.com   Ula Ojiaku   OK, and search for Assumptions Mapping Fundamentals by David Bland. Right, so are there any final words of wisdom that you have for the audience, David. David Bland   Try to keen an open mind when you're going through a lot of this work. I feel as if the mindset is so important, you know. So if you're taking this checkbox mentality, you're not going to get the results out of following any of these processes, right. So, I think being able this idea of, oh, I'm opening myself to the idea that there's some assumptions here that may not be true, that I should probably test. It shouldn't be an exercise where you're just checking the box saying, yep, I wrote down my assumption and then, yeah, I ran an experiment that validated that and then move on, you know. It's more about the process of trying to, because your uncertainty and risk kind of move around. So, this idea of mindset, I can't stress enough that try and keep an open mind and then be willing to learn things that maybe you weren't expected to learn, and I think all these great businesses we look at over the years, they started off as something else, or some form of something else, and then they happened upon something that was an aha moment during the process, and I think that's, we have to be careful of rewriting history and saying it was somebody, it was a genius and he had a single brilliant idea, and then just built the thing and made millions. Very rarely does that ever occur. And so I think when you start really unwinding and it's about having an open mind, being willing to learn things that maybe you didn't anticipate, and I think just that mindset is so important. Ula Ojiaku   Thanks. I don't mean to detract from what you've said, but what I'm hearing from you as well is that it's not a linear process. So whilst you might have, in the book and the ideas you've shared, you know, kind of simplifying it, there are steps, but sometimes there might be loops to it too, so having an open mind to know that's something that worked today or something you got a positive result from, might not necessarily work tomorrow, it's, there's always more and it's an iterative journey.   David Bland   It's quite iterative.   Ula Ojiaku   Yeah. Well thank you so much David for this, making the time for this conversation. I really learned a lot and I enjoyed the conversation. Many thanks.   David Bland   Thanks for having me. Ula Ojiaku   My pleasure. That's all we have for now. Thanks for listening. If you liked this show, do subscribe at www.agileinnovationleaders.com or your favourite podcast provider. Also share with friends and do leave a review on iTunes. This would help others find this show. I'd also love to hear from you, so please drop me an email at ula@agileinnovationleaders.com Take care and God bless!   

Bio Luke Hohmann is Chief Innovation Officer of Applied Frameworks. Applied Frameworks helps companies create more profitable software-enabled solutions. A serial entrepreneur, Luke founded, bootstrapped, and sold the SaaS B2B collaboration software company Conteneo to Scaled Agile, Inc. Conteneo's Weave platform is now part of SAFe Studio. A SAFe® Fellow, prolific author, and trailblazing innovator, Luke's contributions to the global agile community include contributing to SAFe, five books, Profit Streams™, Innovation Games®, Participatory Budgeting at enterprise scale, and a pattern language for market-driven roadmapping. Luke is also co-founder of Every Voice Engaged Foundation, where he partnered with The Kettering Foundation to create Common Ground for Action, the world's first scalable platform for deliberative decision-making. Luke is a former National Junior Pairs Figure Skating Champion and has an M.S.E. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan. Luke loves his wife and four kids, his wife's cooking, and long runs in the California sunshine and Santa Cruz mountains.    Interview Highlights 01:30 Organisational Behaviour & Cognitive Psychology 06:10 Serendipity 09:30 Entrepreneurship 16:15 Applied Frameworks 20:00 Sustainability 20:45 Software Profit Streams 23:00 Business Model Canvas 24:00 Value Proposition Canvas 24:45 Setting the Price 28:45 Customer Benefit Analysis 34:00 Participatory Budgeting 36:00 Value Stream Funding 37:30 The Color of Money 42:00 Private v Public Sector 49:00 ROI Analysis 51:00 Innovation Accounting    Connecting   LinkedIn: Luke Hohmann on LinkedIn Company Website: Applied Frameworks    Books & Resources   ·         Software Profit Streams(TM): A Guide to Designing a Sustainably Profitable Business: Jason Tanner, Luke Hohmann, Federico González ·         Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers (The Strategyzer series): Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur ·         Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want (The Strategyzer Series): Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Gregory Bernarda, Alan Smith, Trish Papadakos ·         Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play: Luke Hohmann ·         The ‘Color of Money' Problem: Additional Guidance on Participatory Budgeting - Scaled Agile Framework ·         The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses, Eric Ries ·         Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change 2, Kent Beck, Cynthia Andres ·         The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering: Brooks, Frederick Phillips ·         Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, Scott McCloud ·         Ponyboy: A Novel, Eliot Duncan ·         Lessons in Chemistry: A Novel, Bonnie Garmus, Miranda Raison, Bonnie Garmus, Pandora Sykes ·         What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing, Oprah Winfrey, Bruce D. Perry ·         Training | Applied Frameworks   Episode Transcript Intro: Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I'm Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener.  Ula Ojiaku   So I have with me Luke Hohmann, who is a four time author, three time founder, serial entrepreneur if I say, a SAFe fellow, so that's a Skilled Agile Framework fellow, keynote speaker and an internationally recognised expert in Agile software development. He is also a proud husband and a father of four. So, Luke, I am very honoured to have you on the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. Thank you for making the time. Luke Hohmann Thank you so much for having me, I'm very happy to be here, and hi everyone who's listening. Ula Ojiaku Yes, I'm sure they're waving back at you as well. I always start my conversations with my guests to find out about them as individuals, you know, so who is Luke? You have a BSc in Computer Science and an MSc in Computer Science and Engineering, but you also studied Cognitive Psychology and Organisational Behaviour in addition to Data Structures and Artificial Intelligence. AI is now making waves and is kind of at the forefront, which is interesting, you had the foresight to also look into these. So my question is, what took you down this path? Luke Hohmann Sure. I had a humble beginning in the world of technology. I worked for a large company, Electronic Data Systems, and it was founded in the mid 60s by a gentleman named Ross Perot, and it became a very, very large company. So my first job at Electronic Data Systems was working in a data centre, and we know what data centres are, but back then, data centres were different because they were predominantly mainframe-based data centres, and I would crawl underneath the floor, cabling the computers and cabling networking equipment. Now, when we think networking, we're really thinking one of two kinds of networking. We think of wireless networking or we think of some form of internet networking, but back in those days, there were varieties of network protocols, literally the standards that we use now weren't invented yet. So it was mainframe networking protocols and dial ups and other forms of networking protocols. From there, I worked my way from beneath the ground up. I had some great managers who saw someone who was worthy of opportunity and they gave me opportunity and it was great. And then eventually I started working in electronic data systems and there was, the first wave of AI came in the mid 80s and that's when we were doing things like building expert systems, and I managed to create with a colleague of mine, who's emerged as my best friend, a very successful implementation of an expert system, an AI-based expert system at EDS, and that motivated me to finish off my college degree, I didn't have my college degree at the time. So EDS supported me in going to the University of Michigan, where as you said, I picked up my Bachelor's and Master's degree, and my advisor at the time was Elliot Soloway, and he was doing research in how programmers program, what are the knowledge structures, what are the ways in which we think when we're programming, and I picked up that research and built programming environments, along with educational material, trying to understand how programmers program and trying to build educational material to teach programming more effectively. That's important because it ignited a lifelong passion for developing education materials, etc. Now the cognitive psychology part was handled through that vein of work, the organisational behaviour work came as I was a student at Michigan. As many of us are when we're in college, we don't make a lot of money, or at university we're not wealthy and I needed a job and so the School of Organisational Behaviour had published some job postings and they needed programmers to program software for their organisational behaviour research, and I answered those ads and I became friends and did the research for many ground-breaking aspects of organisational behaviour and I programmed, and in the process of programming for the professors who were in the School of Organisational Behaviour they would teach me about organisational behaviour and I learned many things that at the time were not entirely clear to me, but then when I graduated from university and I became a manager and I also became more involved in the Agile movement, I had a very deep foundation that has served me very well in terms of what do we mean when we say culture, or what do we mean when we talk about organisational structures, both in the small and in the large, how do we organise effectively, when should we scale, when should we not scale, etc. So that's a bit about my history that I think in terms of the early days helped inform who I am today. Ula Ojiaku Wow, who would have thought, it just reminds me of the word serendipity, you know, I guess a happy coincidence, quote unquote, and would there be examples of where the cognitive psychology part of it also helped you work-wise? Luke Hohmann Yeah, a way to think about cognitive psychology and the branch that, I mean there's, psychology is a huge branch of study, right? So cognitive psychology tends to relate to how do we solve problems, and it tends to focus on problem solving where n = 1 and what I mean by n is the number of participants, and where n is just me as an individual, how do I solve the problems that I'm facing? How do I engage in de-compositional activities or refinement or sense making? Organisational behaviour deals with n > 1. So it can deal with a team of, a para-bond, two people solving problems. It can deal with a small team, and we know through many, many, many decades of research that optimal team structures are eight people or less. I mean, we've known this for, when I say decades I mean millennia. When you look at military structure and military strategy, we know that people need to be organised into much smaller groups to be effective in problem solving and to move quickly. And then in any organisational structure, there's some notion of a team of teams or team engagement. So cognitive psychology, I think, helps leaders understand individuals and their place within the team. And now we talk about, you know, in the Agile community, we talk about things like, I want T-shaped people, I want people with common skills and their area of expertise and by organising enough of the T's, I can create a whole and complete team. I often say I don't want my database designer designing my user interface and I don't want my user interface designer optimising my back end database queries, they're different skills. They're very educated people, they're very sophisticated, but there's also the natural feeling that you and I have about how do I gain a sense of self, how do I gain a sense of accomplishment, a sense of mastery? Part of gaining a sense of mastery is understanding who you are as a person, what you're good at. In Japanese, they would call that Ikigai, right, what are the intersections of, you know, what do I love, what am I good at, what can I make a living at and what do people need, right? All of these intersections occur on an individual level, and then by understanding that we can create more effective teams. Ula Ojiaku Thank you. I've really learned something key here, the relationship between cognitive psychology and organisational behaviour, so thanks for breaking it down. Now, can we go quickly to your entrepreneurship? So there must be three times you started three times a company and you've been successful in that area. What exactly drives you when it comes to establishing businesses and then knowing when to move on? Luke Hohmann Sure. I think it's a combination of reflecting on my childhood and then looking at how that informs someone when they're older, and then opportunities, like you said, serendipity, I think that's a really powerful word that you introduced and it's a really powerful concept because sometimes the serendipity is associated with just allowing yourself to pursue something that presents itself. But when I was young, my father died and my mum had to raise six kids on her own, so my dad died when I was four, my mum raised six kids on her own. We were not a wealthy family, and she was a school teacher and one of the things that happened was, even though she was a very skilled school teacher, there were budget cuts and it was a unionised structure, and even though she was ranked very highly, she lost her job because she was low on the hiring totem pole in terms of how the union worked. It was very hard and of course, it's always hard to make budget cuts and firing but I remember when I was very young making one of those choices saying, I want to work in a field where we are more oriented towards someone's performance and not oriented on when they were hired, or the colour of their skin, or their gender or other things that to me didn't make sense that people were making decisions against. And while it's not a perfect field for sure, and we've got lots of improvement, engineering in general, and of course software engineering and software development spoke to me because I could meet people who were diverse or more diverse than in other fields and I thought that was really good. In terms of being an entrepreneur, that happened serendipitously. I was at the time, before I became an entrepreneur in my last job, was working for an Israeli security firm, and years and years ago, I used to do software anti-piracy and software security through physical dongles. This was made by a company called Aladdin Knowledge Systems in Israel, and I was the head of Engineering and Product Management for the dongle group and then I moved into a role of Business Development for the company. I had a couple of great bosses, but I also learned how to do international management because I had development teams in Israel, I had development teams in Munich, I had development teams in Portland, Oregon, and in the Bay Area, and this was in the 2000s. This is kind of pre-Agile, pre-Salt Lake City, pre-Agile Manifesto, but we were figuring things out and blending and working together. I thought things were going pretty well and I enjoyed working for the Israelis and what we were doing, but then we had the first Gulf War and my wife and I felt that maybe traveling as I was, we weren't sure what was going to happen in the war, I should choose something different. Unfortunately, by that time, we had been through the dot-bomb crisis in Silicon Valley. So it's about 2002 at the time that this was going on, and there really weren't jobs, it was a very weird time in Silicon Valley. So in late 2002, I sent an email to a bunch of friends and I said, hey, I'm going to be a consultant, who wants to hire me, that was my marketing plan, not very clever, and someone called me and said, hey, I've got a problem and this is the kind of thing that you can fix, come consult with us. And I said, great. So I did that, and that started the cleverly named Luke Hohmann Consulting, but then one thing led to another and consulting led to opportunities and growth and I've never looked back. So I think that there is a myth about people who start companies where sometimes you have a plan and you go execute your plan. Sometimes you find the problem and you're solving a problem. Sometimes the problem is your own problem, as in my case I had two small kids and a mortgage and I needed to provide for my family, and so the best way to do that at the time was to become a consultant. Since then I have engaged in building companies, sometimes some with more planning, some with more business tools and of course as you grow as an entrepreneur you learn skills that they didn't teach you in school, like marketing and pricing and business planning etc. And so that's kind of how I got started, and now I have kind of come full circle. The last company, the second last company I started was Conteneo and we ended up selling that to Scaled Agile, and that's how I joined the Scaled Agile team and that was lovely, moving from a position of being a CEO and being responsible for certain things, to being able to be part of a team again, joining the framework team, working with Dean Leffingwell and other members of the framework team to evolve the SAFe framework, that was really lovely. And then of course you get this entrepreneurial itch and you want to do something else, and so I think it comes and goes and you kind of allow yourself those opportunities. Ula Ojiaku Wow, yours is an inspiring story. And so what are you now, so you've talked about your first two Startups which you sold, what are you doing now? Luke Hohmann Yeah, so where I'm at right now is I am the Chief Innovation Officer for a company, Applied Frameworks. Applied Frameworks is a boutique consulting firm that's in a transition to a product company. So if this arm represents our product revenue and this arm represents our services revenue, we're expanding our product and eventually we'll become a product company. And so then the question is, well, what is the product that we're working on? Well, if you look at the Agile community, we've spent a lot of time creating and delivering value, and that's really great. We have had, if you look at the Agile community, we've had amazing support from our business counterparts. They've shovelled literally millions and millions of dollars into Agile training and Agile tooling and Agile transformations, and we've seen a lot of benefit from the Agile community. And when I say Agile, I don't mean SAFe or Scrum or some particular flavour of Agile, I just mean Agile in general. There's been hundreds of millions of dollars to billions of dollars shoved into Agile and we've created a lot of value for that investment. We've got fewer bugs in our software because we've got so many teams doing XP driven practices like Test Driven Development, we've got faster response times because we've learned that we can create smaller releases and we've created infrastructure that lets us do deployments automatically, even if you're doing embedded systems, we figured out how to do over the air updates, we've figured out how to create infrastructure where the cars we're driving are now getting software updates. So we've created for our business leaders lots of value, but there's a problem in that value. Our business leaders now need us to create a profit, and creating value and creating a profit are two different things. And so in the pursuit of value, we have allowed our Agile community to avoid and or atrophy on skills that are vital to product management, and I'm a classically trained Product Manager, so I've done market segmentation and market valuation and market sizing, I've done pricing, I've done licensing, I've done acquisitions, I've done compliance. But when you look at the traditional definition of a Product Owner, it's a very small subset of that, especially in certain Agile methods where Product Owners are team centric, they're internal centric. That's okay, I'm not criticising that structure, but what's happened is we've got people who no longer know how to price, how to package, how to license products, and we're seeing companies fail, investor money wasted, too much time trying to figure things out when if we had simply approached the problem with an analysis of not just what am I providing to you in terms of value, but what is that value worth, and how do I structure an exchange where I give you value and you give me money? And that's how businesses survive, and I think what's really interesting about this in terms of Agile is Agile is very intimately tied to sustainability. One of the drivers of the Agile Movement was way back in the 2000s, we were having very unsustainable practices. People would be working 60, 80, death march weeks of grinding out programmers and grinding out people, and part of the Agile Movement was saying, wait a minute, this isn't sustainable, and even the notion of what is a sustainable pace is really vital, but a company cannot sustain itself without a profit, and if we don't actually evolve the Agile community from value streams into profit streams, we can't help our businesses survive. I sometimes ask developers, I say, raise your hand if you're really embracing the idea that your job is to make more money for your company than they pay you, that's called a profit, and if that's not happening, your company's going to fail. Ula Ojiaku They'll be out of a job. Luke Hohmann You'll be out of a job. So if you want to be self-interested about your future, help your company be successful, help them make a profit, and so where I'm at right now is Applied Frameworks has, with my co-author, Jason Tanner, we have published a bold and breakthrough new book called Software Profit Streams, and it's a book that describes how to do pricing and packaging for software enabled solutions. When we say software enabled solution, we mean a solution that has software in it somehow, could be embedded software in your microwave oven, it could be a hosted solution, it could be an API for a payment processor, it could be the software in your car that I talked about earlier. So software enabled solutions are the foundation, the fabric of our modern lives. As Mark Andreessen says software is eating the world, software is going to be in everything, and we need to know how to take the value that we are creating as engineers, as developers, and convert that into pricing and licensing choices that create sustainable profits. Ula Ojiaku Wow. It's as if you read my mind because I was going to ask you about your book, Software Profit Streams, A Guide to Designing a Sustainably Profitable Business. I also noticed that, you know, there is the Profit Stream Canvas that you and your co-author created. So let's assume I am a Product Manager and I've used this, let's assume I went down the path of using the Business Model Canvas and there is the Customer Value Proposition. So how do they complement? Luke Hohmann How do they all work together? I'm glad you asked that, I think that's a very insightful question and the reason it's so helpful is because, well partly because I'm also friends with Alex Osterwalder, I think he's a dear, he's a wonderful human, he's a dear friend. So let's look at the different elements of the different canvases, if you will, and why we think that this is needed. The Business Model Canvas is kind of how am I structuring my business itself, like what are my partners, my suppliers, my relationships, my channel strategy, my brand strategy with respect to my customer segments, and it includes elements of cost, which we're pretty good at. We're pretty good at knowing our costs and elements of revenue, but the key assumption of revenue, of course, is the selling price and the number of units sold. So, but if you look at the book, Business Model Generation, where the Business Model Canvas comes from, it doesn't actually talk about how to set the price. Is the video game going to be $49? Is it going to be $59, or £49 or £59? Well, there's a lot of thought that goes into that. Then we have the Value Proposition Canvas, which highlights what are the pains the customer is facing? What are the gains that the customer is facing? What are the jobs to be done of the customer? How does my solution relate to the jobs? How does it help solve the pain the customer is feeling? How does it create gain for the customer? But if you read those books, and both of those books are on my shelf because they're fantastic books, it doesn't talk about pricing. So let's say I create a gain for you. Well, how much can I charge you for the gain that I've created? How do I structure that relationship? And how do I know, going back to my Business Model Canvas, that I've got the right market segment, I've got the right investment strategy, I might need to make an investment in the first one or two releases of my software or my product before I start to make a per unit profit because I'm evolving, it's called the J curve and the J curve is how much money am I investing before I well, I have to be able to forecast that, I have to be able to model that, but the key input to that is what is the price, what is the mechanism of packaging that you're using, is it, for example, is it per user in a SAS environment or is it per company in a SAS environment? Is it a meter? Is it like an API transaction using Stripe or a payment processor, Adyen or Stripe or Paypal or any of the others that are out there? Or is it an API call where I'm charging a fraction of a penny for any API call? All of those elements have to be put into an economic model and a forecast has to be created. Now, what's missing about this is that the Business Model Canvas and the Value Proposition Canvas don't give you the insight on how to set the price, they just say there is a price and we're going to use it in our equations. So what we've done is we've said, look, setting the price is itself a complex system, and what I mean by a complex system is that, let's say that I wanted to do an annual license for a new SAS offering, but I offer that in Europe and now my solution is influenced or governed by GDPR compliance, where I have data retention and data privacy laws. So my technical architecture that has to enforce the license, also has to comply with something in terms of the market in which I'm selling. This complex system needs to be organised, and so what canvases do is in all of these cases, they let us take a complex system and put some structure behind the choices that we're making in that complex system so that we can make better choices in terms of system design. I know how I want this to work, I know how I want this to be structured, and therefore I can make system choices so the system is working in a way that benefits the stakeholders. Not just me, right, I'm not the only stakeholder, my customers are in this system, my suppliers are in this system, society itself might be in the system, depending on the system I'm building or the solution I'm building. So the canvases enable us to make system level choices that are hopefully more effective in achieving our goals. And like I said, the Business Model Canvas, the Value Proposition Canvas are fantastic, highly recommended, but they don't cover pricing. So we needed something to cover the actual pricing and packaging and licensing. Ula Ojiaku Well, that's awesome. So it's really more about going, taking a deeper dive into thoughtfully and structurally, if I may use that word, assessing the pricing. Luke Hohmann Yeah, absolutely. Ula Ojiaku Would you say that in doing this there would be some elements of, you know, testing and getting feedback from actual customers to know what price point makes sense? Luke Hohmann Absolutely. There's a number of ways in which customer engagement or customer testing is involved. The very first step that we advocate is a Customer Benefit Analysis, which is what are the actual benefits you're creating and how are your customers experiencing those benefits. Those experiences are both tangible and intangible and that's another one of the challenges that we face in the Agile community. In general, the Agile community spends a little bit more time on tangible or functional value than intangible value. So we, in terms of if I were to look at it in terms of a computer, we used to say speeds and feeds. How fast is the processor? How fast is the network? How much storage is on my disk space? Those are all functional elements. Over time as our computers have become plenty fast or plenty storage wise for most of our personal computing needs, we see elements of design come into play, elements of usability, elements of brand, and we see this in other areas. Cars have improved in quality so much that many of us, the durability of the car is no longer a significant attribute because all cars are pretty durable, they're pretty good, they're pretty well made. So now we look at brand, we look at style, we look at aesthetics, we look at even paying more for a car that aligns with our values in terms of the environment. I want to get an EV, why, because I want to be more environmentally conscious. That's a value driven, that's an intangible factor. And so our first step starts with Customer Benefit Analysis looking at both functional or tangible value and intangible value, and you can't do that, as you can imagine, you can't do that without having customer interaction and awareness with your stakeholders and your customers, and that also feeds throughout the whole pricing process. Eventually, you're going to put your product in a market, and that's a form itself of market research. Did customers buy, and if they didn't buy, why did they not buy? Is it poorly packaged or is it poorly priced? These are all elements that involve customers throughout the process. Ula Ojiaku If I may, I know we've been on the topic of your latest book Software Profit Streams. I'm just wondering, because I can't help but try to connect the dots and I'm wondering if there might be a connection to one of your books, Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play, something like buy a feature in your book, that kind of came to mind, could there be a way of using that as part of the engagement with customers in setting a pricing strategy? I may be wrong, I'm just asking a question. Luke Hohmann I think you're making a great connection. There's two forms of relationship that Innovation Games and the Innovation Games book have with Software Profit Streams. One is, as you correctly noted, just the basics of market research, where do key people have pains or gains and what it might be worth. That work is also included in Alex Osterwalder's books, Value Proposition Design for example, when I've been doing Value Proposition Design and I'm trying to figure out the customer pains, you can use the Innovation Games Speed Boat. And when I want to figure out the gains, I can use the Innovation Game Product Box. Similarly, when I'm figuring out pricing and licensing, a way, and it's a very astute idea, a way to understand price points of individual features is to do certain kinds of market research. One form of market research you can do is Buy-a-Feature, which gives a gauge of what people are willing or might be willing to pay for a feature. It can be a little tricky because the normal construction of Buy-a-Feature is based on cost. However, your insight is correct, you can extend Buy-a-Feature such that you're testing value as opposed to cost, and seeing what, if you take a feature that costs X, but inflate that cost by Y and a Buy-a-Feature game, if people still buy it, it's a strong signal strength that first they want it, and second it may be a feature that you can, when delivered, would motivate you to raise the price of your offering and create a better profit for your company. Ula Ojiaku Okay, well, thank you. I wasn't sure if I was on the right lines. Luke Hohmann It's a great connection. Ula Ojiaku Thanks again. I mean, it's not original. I'm just piggybacking on your ideas. So with respect to, if we, if you don't mind, let's shift gears a bit because I know that, or I'm aware that whilst you were with Scaled Agile Incorporated, you know, you played a key part in developing some of their courses, like the Product POPM, and I think the Portfolio Management, and there was the concept about Participatory Budgeting. Can we talk about that, please? Luke Hohmann I'd love to talk about that, I mean it's a huge passion of mine, absolutely. So in February of 2018, I started working with the framework team and in December of 2018, we talked about the possibility of what an acquisition might look like and the benefits it would create, which would be many. That closed in May of 2019, and in that timeframe, we were working on SAFe 5.0 and so there were a couple of areas in which I was able to make some contributions. One was in Agile product delivery competency, the other was in lean portfolio management. I had a significant hand in restructuring or adding the POPM, APM, and LPM courses, adding things like solutions by horizons to SAFe, taking the existing content on guardrails, expanding it a little bit, and of course, adding Participatory Budgeting, which is just a huge passion of mine. I've done Participatory Budgeting now for 20 years, I've helped organisations make more than five billions of dollars of investment spending choices at all levels of companies, myself and my colleagues at Applied Frameworks, and it just is a better way to make a shared decision. If you think about one of the examples they use about Participatory Budgeting, is my preferred form of fitness is I'm a runner and so, and my wife is also a fit person. So if she goes and buys a new pair of shoes or trainers and I go and buy a new pair of trainers, we don't care, because it's a small purchase. It's frequently made and it's within the pattern of our normal behaviour. However, if I were to go out and buy a new car without involving her, that feels different, right, it's a significant purchase, it requires budgeting and care, and is this car going to meet our needs? Our kids are older than your kids, so we have different needs and different requirements, and so I would be losing trust in my pair bond with my wife if I made a substantial purchase without her involvement. Well, corporations work the same way, because we're still people. So if I'm funding a value stream, I'm funding the consistent and reliable flow of valuable items, that's what value stream funding is supposed to do. However, if there is a significant investment to be made, even if the value stream can afford it, it should be introduced to the portfolio for no other reason than the social structure of healthy organisations says that we do better when we're talking about these things, that we don't go off on our own and make significant decisions without the input of others. That lowers transparency, that lowers trust. So I am a huge advocate of Participatory Budgeting, I'm very happy that it's included in SAFe as a recommended practice, both for market research and Buy-a-Feature in APM, but also more significantly, if you will, at the portfolio level for making investment decisions. And I'm really excited to share that we've just published an article a few weeks ago about Participatory Budgeting and what's called The Color of Money, and The Color of Money is sometimes when you have constraints on how you can spend money, and an example of a constraint is let's say that a government raised taxes to improve transportation infrastructure. Well, the money that they took in is constrained in a certain way. You can't spend it, for example, on education, and so we have to show how Participatory Budgeting can be adapted to have relationships between items like this item requires this item as a precedent or The Color of Money, constraints of funding items, but I'm a big believer, we just published that article and you can get that at the Scaled Agile website, I'm a big believer in the social power of making these financial decisions and the benefits that accrue to people and organisations when they collaborate in this manner. Ula Ojiaku Thanks for going into that, Luke. So, would there be, in your experience, any type of organisation that's participatory? It's not a leading question, it's just genuine, there are typically outliers and I'm wondering in your experience, and in your opinion, if there would be organisations that it might not work for? Luke Hohmann Surprisingly, no, but I want to add a few qualifications to the effective design of a Participatory Budgeting session. When people hear Participatory Budgeting, there's different ways that you would apply Participatory Budgeting in the public and private sector. So I've done citywide Participatory Budgeting in cities and if you're a citizen of a city and you meet the qualifications for voting within that jurisdiction, in the United States, it's typically that you're 18 years old, in some places you have to be a little older, in some places you might have other qualifications, but if you're qualified to participate as a citizen in democratic processes, then you should be able to participate in Participatory Budgeting sessions that are associated with things like how do we spend taxes or how do we make certain investments. In corporations it's not quite the same way. Just because you work at a company doesn't mean you should be included in portfolio management decisions that affect the entire company. You may not have the background, you may not have the training, you may be what my friends sometimes call a fresher. So I do a lot of work overseas, so freshers, they just may not have the experience to participate. So one thing that we look at in Participatory Budgeting and SAFe is who should be involved in the sessions, and that doesn't mean that every single employee should always be included, because their background, I mean, they may be a technical topic and maybe they don't have the right technical background. So we work a little bit harder in corporations to make sure the right people are there. Now, of course, if we're going to make a mistake, we tend to make the mistake of including more people than excluding, partly because in SAFe Participatory Budgeting, it's a group of people who are making a decision, not a one person, one vote, and that's really profoundly important because in a corporation, just like in a para-bond, your opinion matters to me, I want to know what you're thinking. If I'm looking in, I'll use SAFe terminology, if I'm looking at three epics that could advance our portfolio, and I'm a little unsure about two of those epics, like one of those epics, I'm like, yeah, this is a really good thing, I know a little bit about it, this matters, I'm going to fund this, but the other two I'm not so sure about, well, there's no way I can learn through reading alone what the opinions of other people are, because, again, there's these intangible factors. There's these elements that may not be included in an ROI analysis, it's kind of hard to talk about brand and an ROI analysis - we can, but it's hard, so I want to listen to how other people are talking about things, and through that, I can go, yeah, I can see the value, I didn't see it before, I'm going to join you in funding this. So that's among the ways in which Participatory Budgeting is a little different within the private sector and the public sector and within a company. The only other element that I would add is that Participatory Budgeting gives people the permission to stop funding items that are no longer likely to meet the investment or objectives of the company, or to change minds, and so one of the, again, this is a bit of an overhang in the Agile community, Agile teams are optimised for doing things that are small, things that can fit within a two or three week Sprint. That's great, no criticism there, but our customers and our stakeholders want big things that move the market needle, and the big things that move the market needle don't get done in two or three weeks, in general, and they rarely, like they require multiple teams working multiple weeks to create a really profoundly new important thing. And so what happens though, is that we need to make in a sense funding commitments for these big things, but we also have to have a way to change our mind, and so traditional funding processes, they let us make this big commitment, but they're not good at letting us change our mind, meaning they're not Agile. Participatory Budgeting gives us the best of both worlds. I can sit at the table with you and with our colleagues, we can commit to funding something that's big, but six months later, which is the recommended cadence from SAFe, I can come back to that table and reassess and we can all look at each other, because you know those moments, right, you've had that experience in visiting, because you're like looking around the table and you're like, yeah, this isn't working. And then in traditional funding, we keep funding what's not working because there's no built-in mechanism to easily change it, but in SAFe Participatory Budgeting, you and I can sit at the table and we can look at each other with our colleagues and say, yeah, you know, that initiative just, it's not working, well, let's change our mind, okay, what is the new thing that we can fund? What is the new epic? And that permission is so powerful within a corporation. Ula Ojiaku Thanks for sharing that, and whilst you were speaking, because again, me trying to connect the dots and thinking, for an organisation that has adopted SAFe or it's trying to scale Agility, because like you mentioned, Agile teams are optimised to iteratively develop or deliver, you know, small chunks over time, usually two to three weeks, but, like you said, there is a longer time horizon spanning months, even years into the future, sometimes for those worthwhile, meaty things to be delivered that moves the strategic needle if I may use that buzzword. So, let's say we at that lean portfolio level, we're looking at epics, right, and Participatory Budgeting, we are looking at initiatives on an epic to epic basis per se, where would the Lean Startup Cycle come in here? So is it that Participatory Budgeting could be a mechanism that is used for assessing, okay, this is the MVP features that have been developed and all that, the leading indicators we've gotten, that's presented to the group, and on that basis, we make that pivot or persevere or stop decision, would that fit in? Luke Hohmann Yeah, so let's, I mean, you're close, but let me make a few turns and then it'll click better. First, let's acknowledge that the SAFe approach to the Lean Startup Cycle is not the Eric Ries approach, there are some differences, but let's separate how I fund something from how I evaluate something. So if I'm going to engage in the SAFe Lean Startup Cycle, part of that engagement is to fund an MVP, which is going to prove or disprove a given hypothesis. So that's an expenditure of money. Now there's, if you think about the expenditure of money, there's minimally two steps in this process - there's spending enough money to conduct the experiments, and if those experiments are true, making another commitment to spend money again, that I want to spend it. The reason this is important is, let's say I had three experiments running in parallel and I'm going to use easy round numbers for a large corporation. Let's say I want to run three experiments in parallel, and each experiment costs me a million pounds. Okay. So now let's say that the commercialisation of each of those is an additional amount of money. So the portfolio team sits around the table and says, we have the money, we're going to fund all three. Okay, great. Well, it's an unlikely circumstance, but let's say all three are successful. Well, this is like a venture capitalist, and I have a talk that I give that relates the funding cycle of a venture capitalist to the funding cycle of an LPM team. While it's unlikely, you could have all three become successful, and this is what I call an oversubscribed portfolio. I've got three great initiatives, but I can still only fund one or two of them, I still have to make the choice. Now, of course, I'm going to look at my economics and let's say out of the three initiatives that were successfully proven through their hypothesis, let's say one of them is just clearly not as economically attractive, for whatever reason. Okay, we get rid of that one, now, I've got two, and if I can only fund one of them, and the ROI, the hard ROI is roughly the same, that's when Participatory Budgeting really shines, because we can have those leaders come back into the room, and they can say, which choice do we want to make now? So the evaluative aspect of the MVP is the leading indicators and the results of the proving or disproving of the hypotheses. We separate that from the funding choices, which is where Participatory Budgeting and LPM kick in. Ula Ojiaku Okay. So you've separated the proving or disproving the hypothesis of the feature, some of the features that will probably make up an epic. And you're saying the funding, the decision to fund the epic in the first place is a different conversation. And you've likened it to Venture Capital funding rounds. Where do they connect? Because if they're separate, what's the connecting thread between the two? Luke Hohmann The connected thread is the portfolio process, right? The actual process is the mechanism where we're connecting these things. Ula Ojiaku OK, no, thanks for the portfolio process. But there is something you mentioned, ROI - Return On Investment. And sometimes when you're developing new products, you don't know, you have assumptions. And any ROI, sorry to put it this way, but you're really plucking figures from the air, you know, you're modelling, but there is no certainty because you could hit the mark or you could go way off the mark. So where does that innovation accounting coming into place, especially if it's a product that's yet to make contact with, you know, real life users, the customers. Luke Hohmann Well, let's go back to something you said earlier, and what you talked earlier about was the relationship that you have in market researching customer interaction. In making a forecast, let's go ahead and look at the notion of building a new product within a company, and this is again where the Agile community sometimes doesn't want to look at numbers or quote, unquote get dirty, but we have to, because if I'm going to look at building a new idea, or taking a new idea into a product, I have to have a forecast of its viability. Is it economically viable? Is it a good choice? So innovation accounting is a way to look at certain data, but before, I'm going to steal a page, a quote, from one of my friends, Jeff Patton. The most expensive way to figure this out is to actually build the product. So what can I do that's less expensive than building the product itself? I can still do market research, but maybe I wouldn't do an innovation game, maybe I'd do a formal survey and I use a price point testing mechanism like Van Westendorp Price Point Analysis, which is a series of questions that you ask to triangulate on acceptable price ranges. I can do competitive benchmarking for similar products and services. What are people offering right now in the market? Now that again, if the product is completely novel, doing competitive benchmarking can be really hard. Right now, there's so many people doing streaming that we look at the competitive market, but when Netflix first offered streaming and it was the first one, their best approach was what we call reference pricing, which is, I have a reference price for how much I pay for my DVDs that I'm getting in the mail, I'm going to base my streaming service kind of on the reference pricing of entertainment, although that's not entirely clear that that was the best way to go, because you could also base the reference price on what you're paying for a movie ticket and how many, but then you look at consumption, right, because movie tickets are expensive, so I only go to a movie maybe once every other month, whereas streaming is cheap and so I can change my demand curve by lowering my price. But this is why it's such a hard science is because we have this notion of these swirling factors. Getting specifically back to your question about the price point, I do have to do some market research before I go into the market to get some forecasting and some confidence, and research gives me more confidence, and of course, once I'm in the market, I'll know how effective my research matched the market reality. Maybe my research was misleading, and of course, there's some skill in designing research, as you know, to get answers that have high quality signal strength. Ula Ojiaku Thanks for clarifying. That makes perfect sense to me. Luke Hohmann It's kind of like a forecast saying, like there's a group of Agile people who will say, like, you shouldn't make forecasts. Well, I don't understand that because that's like saying, and people will say, well, I can't predict the future. Well, okay, I can't predict when I'm going to retire, but I'm planning to retire. I don't know the date of my exact retirement, but my wife and I are planning our retirement, and we're saving, we're making certain investment choices for our future, because we expect to have a future together. Now our kids are older than yours. My kids are now in university, and so we're closer to retirement. So what I dislike about the Agile community is people will sometimes say, well, I don't know the certainty of the event, therefore, I can't plan for it. But that's really daft, because there are many places in like, you may not for the listeners, her daughter is a little younger than my kids, but they will be going to university one day, and depending on where they go, that's a financial choice. So you could say, well, I don't know when she's going to university, and I can't predict what university she's going to go to, therefore I'm not going to save any money. Really? That doesn't make no sense. So I really get very upset when you have people in the agile community will say things like road mapping or forecasting is not Agile. It's entirely Agile. How you treat it is Agile or not Agile. Like when my child comes up to me and says, hey, you know about that going to university thing, I was thinking of taking a gap year. Okay, wait a minute, that's a change. That doesn't mean no, it means you're laughing, right? But that's a change. And so we respond to change, but we still have a plan. Ula Ojiaku It makes sense. So the reason, and I completely resonate with everything you said, the reason I raised that ROI and it not being known is that in some situations, people might be tempted to use it to game the budget allocation decision making process. That's why I said you would pluck the ROI. Luke Hohmann Okay, let's talk about that. We actually address this in our recent paper, but I'll give you my personal experience. You are vastly more likely to get bad behaviour on ROI analysis when you do not do Participatory Budgeting, because there's no social construct to prevent bad behaviour. If I'm sitting down at a table and that's virtual or physical, it doesn't matter, but let's take a perfect optimum size for a Participatory Budgeting group. Six people, let's say I'm a Director or a Senior Director in a company, and I'm sitting at a table and there's another Senior Director who's a peer, maybe there's a VP, maybe there's a person from engineering, maybe there's a person from sales and we've got this mix of people and I'm sitting at that table. I am not incented to come in with an inflated ROI because those people are really intelligent and given enough time, they're not going to support my initiative because I'm fibbing, I'm lying. And I have a phrase for this, it's when ROI becomes RO-lie that it's dangerous. And so when I'm sitting at that table, what we find consistently, and one of the clients that we did a fair amount of Participatory Budgeting for years ago with Cisco, what we found was the leaders at Cisco were creating tighter, more believable, and more defensible economic projections, precisely because they knew that they were going to be sitting with their peers, and it didn't matter. It can go both ways. Sometimes people will overestimate the ROI or they underestimate the cost. Same outcome, right? I'm going to overestimate the benefit, and people would be like, yeah, I don't think you can build that product with three teams. You're going to need five or six teams and people go, oh, I can get it done with, you know, 20 people. Yeah, I don't think so, because two years ago, we built this product. It's very similar, and, you know, we thought we could get it done with 20 people and we couldn't. We really needed, you know, a bigger group. So you see the social construct creating a more believable set of results because people come to the Participatory Budgeting session knowing that their peers are in the room. And of course, we think we're smart, so our peers are as smart as we are, we're all smart people, and therefore, the social construct of Participatory Budgeting quite literally creates a better input, which creates a better output. Ula Ojiaku That makes sense, definitely. Thanks for sharing that. I've found that very, very insightful and something I can easily apply. The reasoning behind it, the social pressure, quote unquote, knowing that you're not just going to put the paper forward but you'd have to defend it in a credible, believable way make sense. So just to wrap up now, what books have you found yourself recommending to people the most, and why? Luke Hohmann It's so funny, I get yelled at by my wife for how many books I buy. She'll go like “It's Amazon again. Another book. You know, there's this thing called the library.” Ula Ojiaku You should do Participatory Budgeting for your books then sounds like, sorry. Luke Hohmann No, no, I don't, I'd lose. Gosh, I love so many books. So there's a few books that I consider to be my go-to references and my go-to classics, but I also recommend that people re-read books and sometimes I recommend re-reading books is because you're a different person, and as you age and as you grow and you see things differently and in fact, I'm right now re-reading and of course it goes faster, but I'm re-reading the original Extreme Programming Explained by Kent Beck, a fantastic book. I just finished reading a few new books, but let me let me give you a couple of classics that I think everyone in our field should read and why they should read them. I think everyone should read The Mythical Man-Month by Fred Brooks because he really covers some very profound truths that haven't changed, things like Brooks Law, which is adding programmers to a late project, makes it later. He talks about the structure of teams and how to scale before scaling was big and important and cool. He talks about communication and conceptual integrity and the role of the architect. The other book that I'm going to give, which I hope is different than any book that anyone has ever given you, because it's one of my absolute favourite books and I give them away, is a book called Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. Comics or graphic novels are an important medium for communication, and when we talk about storytelling and we talk about how to frame information and how to present information, understanding comics is profoundly insightful in terms of how to present, share, show information. A lot of times I think we make things harder than they should be. So when I'm working with executives and some of the clients that I work with personally, when we talk about our epics, we actually will tell stories about the hero's journey and we actually hire comic book artists to help the executives tell their story in a comic form or in a graphic novel form. So I absolutely love understanding comics. I think that that's really a profound book. Of course you mentioned Alex Osterwalder's books, Business Model Generation, Business Model Canvas. Those are fantastic books for Product Managers. I also, just looking at my own bookshelves, of course, Innovation Games for PMs, of course Software Profit Streams because we have to figure out how to create sustainability, but in reality there's so many books that we love and that we share and that we grow together when we're sharing books and I'll add one thing. Please don't only limit your books to technical books. We're humans too. I recently, this week and what I mean recent I mean literally this weekend I was visiting one of my kids in Vermont all the way across the country, and so on the plane ride I finished two books, one was a very profound and deeply written book called Ponyboy. And then another one was a very famous book on a woman protagonist who's successful in the 60s, Lessons in Chemistry, which is a new book that's out, and it was a super fun light read, some interesting lessons of course, because there's always lessons in books, and now if it's okay if I'm not overstepping my boundaries, what would be a book that you'd like me to read? I love to add books to my list. Ula Ojiaku Oh my gosh, I didn't know. You are the first guest ever who's twisted this on me, but I tend to read multiple books at a time. Luke Hohmann Only two. Ula Ojiaku Yeah, so, and I kind of switch, maybe put some on my bedside and you know there's some on my Kindle and in the car, just depending. So I'm reading multiple books at a time, but based on what you've said the one that comes to mind is the new book by Oprah Winfrey and it's titled What Happened to You? Understanding Trauma, because like you said, it's not just about reading technical books and we're human beings and we find out that people behave probably sometimes in ways that are different to us, and it's not about saying what's wrong with you, because there is a story that we might not have been privy to, you know, in terms of their childhood, how they grew up, which affected their worldview and how they are acting, so things don't just suddenly happen. And the question that we have been asked and we sometimes ask of people, and for me, I'm reading it from a parent's perspective because I understand that even more so that my actions, my choices, they play a huge, you know, part in shaping my children. So it's not saying what's wrong with you? You say, you know, what happened to you? And it traces back to, based on research, because she wrote it with a renowned psychologist, I don't know his field but a renowned psychologist, so neuroscience-based psychological research on human beings, attachment theory and all that, just showing how early childhood experiences, even as early as maybe a few months old, tend to affect people well into adulthood. So that would be my recommendation. Luke Hohmann Thank you so much. That's a gift. Ula Ojiaku Thank you. You're the first person to ask me. So, my pleasure. So, before we go to the final words, where can the audience find you, because you have a wealth of knowledge, a wealth of experience, and I am sure that people would want to get in touch with you, so how can they do this please? Luke Hohmann Yeah, well, they can get me on LinkedIn and they can find me at Applied Frameworks. I tell you, I teach classes that are known to be very profound because we always reserve, myself and the instructors at Applied Frameworks, we have very strong commitments to reserving class time for what we call the parking lot or the ask me anything question, which are many times after I've covered the core material in the class, having the opportunity to really frame how to apply something is really important. So I would definitely encourage people to take one of my classes because you'll not get the material, you'll get the reasons behind the material, which means you can apply it, but you'll also be able to ask us questions and our commitment as a company is you can ask us anything and if we don't know the answer, we'll help you find it. We'll help you find the expert or the person that you need talk to, to help you out and be successful. And then, and I think in terms of final words, I will simply ask people to remember that we get to work in the most amazing field building things for other people and it's joyful work, and we, one of my phrases is you're not doing Agile, if you're not having fun at work, there's something really wrong, there's something missing, yeah we need to retrospect and we need to improve and we need to reflect and all those important things, absolutely, but we should allow ourselves to experience the joy of serving others and being of service and building things that matter. Ula Ojiaku I love the concept of joyful Agile and getting joy in building things that matter, serving people and may I add also working together with amazing people, and for me it's been a joyful conversation with you, Luke, I really appreciate you making the time, I am definitely richer and more enlightened as a result of this conversation, so thank you so much once more. Luke Hohmann Thank you so much for having me here, thank you everyone for listening with us. Ula Ojiaku  My pleasure. That's all we have for now. Thanks for listening. If you liked this show, do subscribe at www.agileinnovationleaders.com or your favourite podcast provider. Also share with friends and do leave a review on iTunes. This would help others find this show. I'd also love to hear from you, so please drop me an email at ula@agileinnovationleaders.com Take care and God bless!   

Ethan Mollick: Co-Intelligence Ethan Mollick is a professor of management at Wharton, specializing in entrepreneurship and innovation. His research has been featured in various publications, including Forbes, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Through his writing, speaking, and teaching, Ethan has become one of the most prominent and provocative explainers of AI, focusing on the practical aspects of how these new tools for thought can transform our world. He's the author of the popular One Useful Thing Substack and also the author of the book, Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI*. Whether you've used it or not, you've heard that AI will transform how we work. Given how quickly the technology is changing how do you start and, if you've started already, what's the way to use it well. In this conversation, Ethan and I discuss the principles for using AI, even as the technology changes. Key Points GPT-4 is already passing the bar examination in the 90th percentile, acing AP exams, and even passing the Certified Sommelier Examination. Always invite AI too the table. It's may be helpful, frustrating, or useless — but understanding how it works will help you appreciate how it may help or threaten you. Being the “human in the loop” will help you catch where AI isn't accurate or helpful. Zeroing in on areas where you are already an expert will help you appreciate where AI is useful and where its limitation emerge. Treat AI like a person, but tell it what kind of person it is. It's helpful to think of AI like an alien person rather than a machine. Assume this is the worst AI you will ever use. Embracing that reality will help you stay open to possibilities on how you use AI do your work better. Resources Mentioned Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI by Ethan Mollick Interview Notes Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required). Related Episodes How to Build an Invincible Company, with Alex Osterwalder (episode 470) Doing Better Than Zero Sum-Thinking, with Renée Mauborgne (episode 641) How to Begin Leading Through Continuous Change, with David Rogers (episode 649) Discover More Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.

| อะไรคือสิ่งที่ไม่ควรเสียเวลาทำในการสร้างนวัตกรรมองค์กร | คำแนะนำจากคุณ Alex Osterwalder ผู้คิดค้น Business model canvas จะได้ประหยัดเวลามากกว่าเดิม | จากบทความ Your First 100 Days On The Innovation Job (and Beyond) | --- #เธมส์thinkต่าง ผู้เขียนหนังสือ #เมื่อการทำงานหนักไม่ใช่คำตอบของความก้าวหน้า หนังสือที่จะช่วยคุณกอบกู้ความสุขในการทำงานของคุณให้กลับมา จะได้ไม่เป็นบ้าจากการทำงานที่ผิดวิธี . หาได้ที่ SE-ED, นายอินทร์, Kinokuniya, B2S หรือที่ #DOTBOOKS ตาม link ด้านล่าง https://bit.ly/4ald3UV

Dr. Alexander (Alex) Osterwalder, founder & CEO of Strategyzer, is one of the world's most influential strategy and innovation experts. A leading author, entrepreneur, and in-demand speaker, his work has changed the way established companies do business and how new ventures get started. In this episode of Leadership NOW with Dan Pontefract, Alex lays out his nfluential ideas on modern business models, emphasizing the need for innovative strategies and a shift away from traditional business thinking. Continuously ranked in the top 50 management thinkers worldwide by Thinkers50 and a visiting professor at IMD, Osterwalder is known for simplifying the strategy development process and turning complex concepts into digestible visual models. Together with Yves Pigneur, he invented the Business Model Canvas, Value Proposition Canvas, and Business Portfolio Map – practical tools that are trusted by millions of business practitioners from leading global companies, including Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Mastercard, Sony, Fujitsu, 3M, Intel, Roche, Colgate-Palmolive, and many more. Strategyzer is an innovation powerhouse, providing online courses, applications, and technology-enabled services to help organizations effectively and systematically manage strategy, growth, and transformation. Osterwalder's books include the international bestseller «Business Model Generation», «Value Proposition Design», «Testing Business Ideas», «High-Impact Tools for Teams» and «The Invincible Company,» A frequent and popular keynote speaker, Osterwalder travels the world discussing his ideas and strategies at Fortune 500 companies, premiere innovation conferences, and leading universities. He holds a doctorate from HEC Lausanne/Switzerland and is a founding member of The Constellation, a global not-for-profit organization connecting local responses to global issues around the world.

Growing your people to grow your organization – it makes sense, right? But what about approaching the problem from the other direction – growing your organization, to grow your people? When's the last time you looked at the state of your org chart? And how willing are you to experiment with it? Today, I want to bring back an old episode. In 2020, we spoke with Alex Osterwalder about his idea of an invincible company – one that is constantly reinventing itself to stay on the bleeding edge of disruption. Alex, along with his mentor Yves Pigneur, is one of the top-ranked management thinkers in the world – as of Thinkers50 2023, which just wrapped up, the duo is number 8 on that list. I hope you enjoy.  

รู้จักองค์ประกอบที่ใช้ตัดสินว่าไอเดียไหนควรไปต่อหรือพอแค่นี้ | ทำไมเราจำเป็นต้องกำจัดไอเดียทิ้งให้มาก ----- อย่าลืมกดติดตามช่องทางอื่นๆกันไว้นะครับ Line official : page.line.me/hcz9381s FB: facebook.com/decgeneration twitter: twitter.com/decgeneration tiktok: vt.tiktok.com/ZSdXes4FF/ IG: instagram.com/decgeneration ---- #เธมส์thinkต่าง ผู้เขียนหนังสือ #เมื่อการทำงานหนักไม่ใช่คำตอบของความก้าวหน้า หนังสือที่จะช่วยคุณกอบกู้ความสุขในการทำงานของคุณให้กลับมา จะได้ไม่เป็นบ้าจากการทำงานที่ผิดวิธี (หาได้ที่ SE-ED, นายอินทร์, Kinokuniya, B2S) ครับ : )

แนวคิดในการสร้างนวัตกรรมจาก Alex Osterwalder ผู้คิดค้น Business Model Canvas | รู้จักโลกธุรกิจ 2 ประเภท และ 3 รูปแบบในการสร้างนวัตกรรมที่เหมาะสมที่ทำให้องค์กรเติบโต ----- อย่าลืมกดติดตามช่องทางอื่นๆกันไว้นะครับ Line official : page.line.me/hcz9381s FB: facebook.com/decgeneration twitter: twitter.com/decgeneration tiktok: vt.tiktok.com/ZSdXes4FF/ IG: instagram.com/decgeneration ---- #เธมส์thinkต่าง ผู้เขียนหนังสือ #เมื่อการทำงานหนักไม่ใช่คำตอบของความก้าวหน้า หนังสือที่จะช่วยคุณกอบกู้ความสุขในการทำงานของคุณให้กลับมา จะได้ไม่เป็นบ้าจากการทำงานที่ผิดวิธี (หาได้ที่ SE-ED, นายอินทร์, Kinokuniya, B2S) ครับ : )

How do you stimulate innovation?In this episode, Alex Osterwalder, CEO and Founder of Strategyzer, talks about what it takes to stimulate and pursue innovation in a difficult and dynamic context. He talks about why CEOs need to invest at least 40% of their time on innovation activities, how they should use new measures (AKIs that complement OKRs), and how to develop inclusive, high performing teams. Alex also talks about the implications for AI in innovation - how it can help develop prototypes and how it will encourage innovation professionals to up their game. “If you're not producing innovation results you're doing innovation theatre.” – Alex OsterwalderYou'll hear about:How organisations practise innovationWhy OKRs don't workSeparating exploration and exploitationCreating an innovation mindsetShould CEOs have split roles? The impact of ecosystems on innovationHow AI is being used in innovationDeveloping high performance inclusive teamsWhat are Alex's strengths?What is Alex's leadership style?The biggest sacrifices Alex has madeAbout Alex:  Alex is the CEO and Founder of Strategyzer, the company that provides corporate innovation strategy advice, tools, and training. He's the co-author of five books, including the Invincible Company and the Business Model Canvas. He is also a Visiting Professor at the IMD Business School. Ranked No. 4 of the top 50 management thinkers worldwide, Alex also holds the Thinkers50 Strategy Award.His resources:●      Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osterwalder/●      Strategzer: https://www.strategyzer.com/●      Books: https://www.strategyzer.com/booksMy resources:Sign up to my Strategic Leader newsletter (http://bit.ly/36WRpri) for stimuli, ideas, guidance and tips on how to lead your team, organisation or self more effectively, delivered straight to your inbox:Subscribe to my YouTube channel (http://bit.ly/3cFGk1k) where you can watch the conversation.Take the Extraordinary Essentials test (https://bit.ly/3EhSKY5) to identify your strengths and development areas as a strategic leader:For more details about me: ●      Services (https://bit.ly/373jctk) to CEOs, entrepreneurs and professionals.●      About me (https://bit.ly/3LFsfiO) - my background, experience and philosophy.●      Examples of my writing (https://bit.ly/3O7jkc7).●      Follow me and engage with me on LinkedIn (https://bit.ly/2Z2PexP).●      Follow me and engage with me on Twitter (https://bit.ly/36XavNI).

How do you manage your metrics around innovation? How much investment do you need to put into innovation as a mature business? How do you give people the time and structure needed to innovate in your business? This week we asked one of the most influential strategy and innovation experts to come back to The Melting Pot to answer these and some other questions about innovation. Founder and CEO of Strategyzer, Alex Osterwalder reckons that seven out of ten projects that you start within your business need to be killed. And maybe one in ten of your innovation projects is a go, but you're going to need to build a portfolio of maybe 50 live projects that are at any one time to get enough innovation going in your business to make a material change, to get a return on your investment. He also introduced us to the concept of AKIs (Aspirations and Key Insights) – as opposed to Objectives and Key Results – for innovation teams not to produce results, but key insights to understand whether they should kill, iterate or scale a product. Fantastic conversation with Alex. If you're in the innovation arena, this is a must-listen for you. Download and listen to learn more. On today's podcast: What's the ideal innovation teamHow and when to kill your innovation ‘zombie projects'How to ‘fail faster' in innovationGetting the best ROIAKIs (Aspirations and Key Insights) vs OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) Follow Alex Osterwalder:Strategizer websiteLinkedInTwitter - @alexosterwalderHigh Impact Tools for TeamsThe Invincible CompanyTesting Business Ideas Book recommendations: The Courage To Be Disliked Enjoyed the show? Leave a Review 

Jeremy Utley: Ideaflow Jeremy Utley is the Director of Executive Education at the Stanford d.school, and an Adjunct Professor at Stanford's School of Engineering, where he has earned multiple favorite professor distinctions from graduate programs. He co-teaches two celebrated courses, Leading Disruptive Innovation (d.leadership) and LaunchPad, which focus on creating real-world impact with the tools of design & innovation. He is also on the teaching teams of d.org, an organizational design course, and Transformative Design, a course that turns the tools of design onto graduate students' lives. One of the most prodigious collaborators at the d.school, Jeremy has taught alongside the likes of Lecrae, Dan Ariely, Laszlo Bock, and Greg McKeown. He is the author along with Perry Klebahn of Ideaflow: The Only Business Metric That Matters. Brainstorming sessions often emerge to address a problem requiring new ideas or innovation. However, the way many of us approach brainstorming vastly limits what's possible for our teams and organizations. In this conversation, Jeremy and I discuss where leaders go wrong and some of the most helpful mindsets and tactics to do better. Key Points We tend to like cognitive closure. That often stops us from moving forward more substantially during brainstorming. The Idea Ratio shows that 2000 ideas are needed for every one idea that goes to market. Most teams and organizations vastly underestimate this. Set the expectation that brainstorming is a process, not a single event. That will help you surface vastly more useful ideas. Gather initial suggestions before a session to avoid favoring extroverts and early anchoring on what's said initially. A useful way to make this is ask the language, “How might we…?” Warm-up exercises can substantially help put team members in the right mindset for creativity, especially for those with busy schedules moving between contexts. Resources Mentioned Ideaflow: The Only Business Metric That Matters by Jeremy Utley and Perry Klebahn Jeremy Utley's website Interview Notes Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required). Related Episodes How to Be Present, with Dan O'Connor (episode 399) The Way to Nurture New Ideas, with Safi Bahcall (episode 418) How to Build an Invincible Company, with Alex Osterwalder (episode 470) Discover More Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.

Get ready for today's episode 66 of the Most Awesome Founder Podcast! As always, the Inspiration Session will discuss topics that made Dries and Gerrit think, learn, and laugh.    Here are some exciting sneak peeks of the topics explored within the episode: -      What impact do prominent Venture Capitalists have on replacing startup founders over time? -      The four main challenges Venture Capital is facing, calling on the question of whether VCs need to change -      Generative Artificial Intelligence and its impact on productivity   Take advantage of this thought-provoking and informative episode!  Looking forward to hearing your opinion in the comments! :)   Discussed sources: Conti, Annamaria, and Stuart JH Graham. "Valuable choices: prominent venture capitalists' influence on startup CEO replacements." Management Science 66.3 (2020): 1325-1350. https://www.ft.com/content/f8f6144a-1901-4391-9abf-072224d132c7 Noy, Shakked, and Whitney Zhang. "Experimental evidence on the productivity effects of generative artificial intelligence." Available at SSRN 4375283 (2023). Ozmen Garibay, Ozlem, et al. "Six Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Grand Challenges." International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction (2023): 1-47. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/technology/bing-chatbot-transcript.html How to Rewire Your Brain to Feel Good on Mondays     Chapters (0:03) Teaser by Gerrit (1:14) Introduction by Gerrit (2:30) Reflection on the last episode with Alex Osterwalder (3:20) Dries starts with something that made him think: Should we keep founders as a CEO or replace them? (5:00) What is Gerrit's opinion on this? (7:00) The founder's role changes over time (7:33) paper discovers: would prominent VCs more likely to replace the founder or not? (8:30) Gerrit answers the question with his own experience (9:20) Dries presents the paper's findings (12:45) Gerrit explains the paper's findings with real-life examples (15:30) Gerrit introduces the topic that made him think: Why VC needs to change (19:43) Gerrit deep dives into the four main reasons for VCs to change (25:10) Dries' opinion on the VC topic (27:04) Gerrit opens discussion on another component: the structure of VCs (35:40) What made Dries think: academic research on the experimental evidence of AI on productivity (37:30) Gerrit's pos & neg experience with open AI in daily life (40:00) Dries explains the background of the study (43:30) Dries elaborates on where he uses generative AI (47:00) Gerrit discusses the usage of generative AI (48:20) Futuristic usage of generative AI (49:00) Gerrit goes into a personal story of using generative AI (51:50) What did Gerrit learn: challenges around AI to make it compatible (54:30) A societal challenge Dries faced with generative AI (56:20) Gerrit dives into the six challenges the paper identified (59:00) Geopolitical setting on generative AI (1:03:25) 6th point of Gerrit's paper (1:05:00) Discussing the paper Gerrit introduced (1:07:15) Can we still harness AI? (1:10:26) something that made Dries laugh: AI usage (1:13:40) Do you think AI will be able to predict future events for you? (1:17:03) something that made Gerrit laugh: How can people re-program themselves to lose the Monday blues (1:18:15) Why do people hate Mondays? (1:18:30) People have routines: how we can get rid of the Monday blues (1:23:30) What Dries does not hate Mondays (1:25:00) Two critical points to staying less stressed & enjoying Monday (1:26:15) What health metrics does Gerrit track? (1:27:45) Reflection on the episode by Gerrit and thank you!

Better Innovation listeners who have been with us for a few years may feel a sense of déjà vu with this episode. Today's guest, Alex Osterwalder - inventor of the Business Model Canvas, founder & CEO of Strategyzer, and one of the world's most influential strategy and innovation experts - appeared on the show back in November 2018 to speak with Jeff in front of a live audience. Alex and Jeff discussed how organizations can thrive with renewed attention to business modeling.   2018 now feels like a lifetime ago . . . Seeking updated insights from Alex, Jeff hosts a discussion on a new culture of innovation that has emerged and how organizations can reframe their approach to innovation in the context of today's volatile global landscape. Listen-in as Jeff and Alex catch-up and address how business challenges should be converted to innovation challenges to achieve new breakthroughs.

Senior leaders often want to know how they can build an environment to allow innovation to thrive. In order to do that, they first need to realise that business activities live on an uncertainty continuum - that we call the Explore-Exploit Continuum - and that creating new growth engines and managing existing business(es) are on opposite ends of this continuum. A better understanding of the Explore-Exploit Continuum will help executives and innovation teams put in place the right investment and management processes, the required skill set and culture to explore new business ideas as successfully as they exploit current businesses. An upcoming info session for the Growth Accelerator Program mentioned by Alex: https://www.imd.org/event/innovation/2023-01-24/masterclass-information-session/

In deze DenkTank special podcast bespreken Remy Gieling en Hans Janssen de beste inzichten uit Osterwalders presentaties én hoor je de mooiste momenten van Osterwalder op Main Stage. De Zwitserse innovatiespecialist Alex Osterwalder was voor velen dé verrassing van Amsterdam Business Forum 2022. Hij combineerde frisse ideeën met een heerlijk provocatieve stijl. Osterwalder is de uitvinder van één van de meest gebruikte tools voor innovatie: het Business Model Canvas. Dat hij daarachter zit, is geen toeval: Osterwalder bedenkt aan de lopende band slimme tools die ondernemers en leiders helpen om hun organisatie innovatiever te maken.In deze podcast:Nemen Remy en Hans je mee langs de beste inzichten uit Alex's talksVertelt Osterwalder welke drie elementen nodig zijn om je organisatie onoverwinnelijk te maken.Waarschuwt hij voor de gevaren van het flink investeren in je innovaties.Geeft hij drie kritische vragen die je kunt stellen om te kijken of je innovatie écht serieus neemt.Veegt hij de vloer aan met 3 populaire managementtools: het businessplan, de MVP en het interview.Remy Gieling en Hans Janssen kijken terug op Amsterdam Business Forum aan de hand van deze mooie fragmenten van ‘Alex Osterwalder in actie'. Noot: waar we niet opkwamen in het gesprek was: https://www.liveondemand.com/

Apps with Patrice Archer from Appy Ventures Patrice Archer is CEO of Appy Ventures which helps organisations develop apps. He is a startup maestro. With 10+ years of experience in private equity financing and another 8 years building businesses, he is an impressive guest. Patrice specialises in UX, commercialisation and finding how you can benefit your market with an App. Kevin and Graham experienced first-hand how Patrice is a lateral thinker. He sees the opportunities other people miss. Appy Ventures Patrice didn't think too long about naming his company. He says it's like naming a child. Don't overthink it! So Appy Ventures was borne. The company serves businesses looking for web and mobile apps. Kevin dryly said you could very easily put an H infront of Appy to make it Happy Ventures! It's how his mind works. Find out more about Patrice's website - go to https://appyventures.com Why Do People Need Apps? With a deep understanding of something, the app can better serve a target audience. Here's what Patrice said: http://thenext100days.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Patrice-Archer-Why-Have-an-App.mp4 Meanwhile, Patrice loves to help people at any stage of their development. Yes, they may be putting together ideas for a fundraising round, as an early stage start-up, but by helping them now it helps them VALIDATE a concept. How to validate a new idea? Create wire frames representations with a little graphic design of your app. Get feedback. http://thenext100days.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Patrice-Archer-How-to-Validate-a-New-App.mp4   80:20 Rule It's that rule again! Thinking about validation, if you ask 5 people what they think, without leading questions. All you want is their thoughts. With just 5 people, you get 80% of the feedback as you would from a 1,000 people. So, put yourself out there. Patrice says it might be uncomfortable. The app idea is yours. You live and breathe it. Get the feedback, then iterate. Then go ask 5 more people. That'll give you a real solid understanding of what they think the app will do. On top of that, Patrice says do something called a "Lean canvas". That phrase was new to Kevin and I - but not the explanation! FROM GOOGLE - What is a Lean Canvas? Lean Canvas is a 1-page business plan template created by Ash Maurya that helps you deconstruct your idea into its key assumptions. It is adapted from Alex Osterwalder's Business Model Canvas and optimized for Lean Startups. It replaces elaborate business plans with a single page business model. What's covered on the 1-page Business Plan? Problem you are trying to solve? Solution? The market? Who are the users that are going to be using this? Costs and revenues What is your channel to market as well? So, with the prototype, some research and this 1-pager, you need to ask the question - is this a business? Apps for the Affluent Market http://thenext100days.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Patrice-Archer-Apps-for-Affluent-Clients.mp4 Patrice provided a drinks investment app example. Kevin referred to our podcast with Dominic Brennan who runs Noble Rot, a fine wine investment opportunity. We briefly discussed costs, and Patrice mentioned that the cost of a prototype is usually in the low thousands. After that there is a build or phase one. And that costs tens of thousands. How NOT to Market and How To Market an App Patrice recommends pre-selling to influencers. http://thenext100days.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Patrice-Archer-how-to-Market-an-App.mp4 When it comes to influencers, listen to our podcast episode 319 with Sedge Beswick. Graham mentioned a colleague who works as a Marketing & Events Co-ordinator for the Friends of Silsden Town Hall. Her name is Mehrunnisa and here's a link to her Instagram page (not that she needs more followers!!) Patrice mentioned a client who has 170,000 well-engaged followers on Instagram to build a business off the back of...

Full episode video available here: https://youtu.be/gWWkD9hQVtA  Ula's Bio: Uloaku (Ula) Ojiaku is a Business Agility Strategist, coach, mentor and trainer with a focus on helping leaders and their teams in large organisations embrace a Lean-Agile mindset and adopt its associated ways of working to improve how they operate, effectively respond to changes in the marketplace and ultimately deliver value to their customers. With nearly 20 years of professional experience, she has worked in multiple countries, in a variety of technical, business and leadership roles across industries including Oil & Gas, Telecommunications, Financial Services, Government, Higher Education and Consulting. A certified Technology Business Management (TBM) Council Executive, SAFe 5.0 Program Consultant (SPC 5.0) and ICAgile Coach, Ula has a Masters degree in Computer Science from the University College London (UCL) and a Bachelors degree in Electronics Engineering from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN). She is the Founder/ Principal Consultant of Mezahab Group Ltd (a UK-based Lean Agile Innovation training and consulting company). She also currently serves a multi-national retail organisation as a Senior Agile Coach and is a guest lecturer at Coventry University.  Social Media/ Websites: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/uloakuojiaku/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/uloakuojiaku Website: www.agileinnovationleaders.com  Episode Transcript Ula Ojiaku Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders Podcast. I'm Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more, with actionable takeaways for you the listener. Hi everyone. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of the Agile Innovation Leaders Podcast. I had the privilege on the 30th of March 2022 to speak at the Agile Coach Conference organised by Gladwell Academy. My talk was focused on the SLoMoSH Canvas, which is the tool that I had developed to help with facilitating conversations amongst teams, to clarify roles and responsibilities. The SLoMoSH Canvas has other use cases, however my talk was just focused on the clarification of roles and responsibilities and how it could be used in that situation. Without further ado, my talk at the 2022 Agile Coach Conference in Amsterdam. Thank you, it's a great privilege to be here, live and in person. The last time I attended and participated in a face to face conference was back in 2019, December 2019, San Francisco, so you can't imagine how refreshing it is to be out here. So I'm here, all the way from the United Kingdom, I'm here to speak to you about the topic ‘Set up for Success: Clarifying Roles and Responsibilities using the SLoMoSH Canvas.' I know, ‘what's that word SLoMoSH'? I made it up, as you're going to come to realise. But without further ado, let me tell you about myself. I have about 20 years of professional experience. I started off in engineering, hands-on engineering roles in telecommunications, oil and gas industry, and then kind of moved on to that more business-facing, interfacing type of role with teams where you're kind of translating the conversations, and my first foray into agile ways of working was about 16 years ago as a field engineer, with Schlumberger as a field engineer. We had standups, we had kanbans and all that, but we didn't use the term agile, it wasn't a buzzword then. So as coaches, and I'm sure as we're predominantly agile coaches in the audience here, I've noticed. And we do have those… part of our satisfaction that comes from our jobs is when the teams, the leaders, the people we're coaching, have those ‘aha' moments, and I love what Lyssa (Adkins) said in the morning, it's really about taking a holistic view, building those relationships, meeting people where they are, so that's what I love about being an agile coach. I host a podcast, Agile Innovation Leaders, and I've been privileged to have people like Jeff Sutherland, Steve Blank, Alex Osterwalder, but that's not why we're here. So, we're going to do an ice breaker. I have two children, I have a son who's 11 and a daughter, Kiki, who's 9. So one day Kiki comes back from school and says, and I'm busy working and in the zone, and she says ‘mum, I have something for you, I have a game I have to play'. And I'm like, in my mind, I don't need this right now, but I have to be a loving parent with my children isn't it, so I say ‘all right Kiki, what do you have for me?' All right, so I'm going to teach you that. I don't need to tell you the story, but the key thing is now, I'm going to mention three words in succession, and after each word, you know, you use A, shout out A and raise your left hand if it's an A, if that word matches with an A, so if it's an animal, you raise your left hand, if it's a food, the word that I call, raise your right hand, you can also shout it out if you feel like that, and if it's a place, C, then raise both hands and say C. Does that sound clear enough? OK, let's do a trial run. So, A, well, you did it. So I was going to say ‘poodle', A, awesome. Burger! B. You guys are rocking it. And a castle. C. OK, awesome, you guys have gotten it. Now let's do the real thing. OK, so, I'm going to mention it in a random way. I know you're watching and wondering what I'm doing. Yoghurt. B. OK, B, good, good. Lion. A. Are you sure? Yes, it's an animal, lion is an animal. All right, third and the last, Turkey. (Laughter) That was exactly what my daughter did to me, you know she said, Turkey and I was like OK, where does it go, because mine was more like, A is stand here, B is stand here and C is stand here. But I will take the blame, as a responsible agile coach I will say, if I had wanted you to understand, I would have explained it better. That is the words of the famous Johan Cruyff. And I should have explained it better because, you know, I kind of, hands up if you know, you didn't quite go into the outliers, because you didn't, because the impression based on the instruction was the, you know, the words would fit into one box. Either it's going to be A, or B, or C. Hands up if that was your impression? OK, the rest of you could see that two, three steps ahead, awesome, please call me, because maybe we have a business to start because you can see into the future. But that's the case with transformation initiatives. There are lots of moving wheels, it's about change on a massive scale, and the fact is, with all the changes happening, and people are complex beings, and as Lyssa mentioned again, in her talk earlier on today. I was taking copious notes for all the speakers, when you all were speaking. It's really about moving from that mindset of an organisation and people as machines to an organisation as a complex eco system. And I don't know about you, but for most transformation, and no matter where you are on your transformation journey, whether you are very mature or whether you are just at the beginning of the journey or somewhere in between, the fact is there are always going to be moving parts, and we change, and we need to change and adapt as we go on. So, again, Lyssa, by now you all know I'm a massive Lyssa fan, but the key thing is how work has really impacted a lot of the things we do as agile coaches and the agile coaching competencies that she and Michael Spayd developed, you know has kind of helped with clarifying, what are those multiple hats, those balls that we need to juggle as agile coaches as we support and lead and help the teams as they move under transformation, the journey towards ways of agile working, and developing an agile mindset. Now, usually it would start with some sort of training, you know, to train people into the roles, to understand, because people need to be trained. And I think it was, you know, and I think it was during the session with Marcel, there was something about needing to combine education with coaching. So, in terms of like the initial starting point of training people, let's say classroom-based training, there would be, if you, as an agile coach, are the one running that training, you need to have your teacher's hat on. Lyssa, am I correct, or am I bungling it up? Lyssa Adkins You've been beautiful, I'm overwhelmed. Ula Ojiaku Ok, well please correct me, because you are the expert, and that's your work there. Anyway, so you have to have that teaching hat on, but the main message today that I want to bring to you here, the key point it this, more often than not, just classroom-based training or training of any sort isn't quite enough for the teams to start adapting or applying their learnings to their context. Even within the same organisation, you'll find out that no two teams are alike, and you might have a product owner in team A and a product owner in team B. They are on paper, they have the same role, the title, however, the nuances of what they do with it, it might mean that there are other things that they would need to take on as a result of the nature of their work and the team that they belong to. And so, in what I'm going to be sharing with you in terms of the case study, I've also had to become a neutral process holder, you know, to facilitate conversations with the teams. And this is with the purpose of helping them to connect the dots. OK, just to help them to connect the dots, because they need to get to a shared understanding of whatever topic it is that they are having. So I picked this graphic from the internet. Unfortunately, I don't know who the author, the original originator is, but credit to them, it kind of beautifully illustrates the concept. You might have the same people in the room, listening to this talk right now like we are, you know, if you look at this picture here, there are three people looking at a picture of a truck, but what you can see is something, different elements of the picture is coming out, jumping out at them. But you need to make sure that they also have a joined up view, you know, to have the bigger picture in mind. So how does that apply to us as agile coaches? It's not about having lots of different frameworks, and we don't want to go into that rut of being like the proverbial person with their hangman seeing everything as a nail, it's about taking the time to understand the context. And as Sharon and Yasmina said in their talk, you know, you need to have tools in the toolbox, but you also need to know that it's not about the tools in the toolbox, it's, according to my colleague Scott Henault, who says the power of the tool is in the conversation it creates. It goes back to the people, it's about helping them to have a conversation so that they have a shared understanding to work together more effectively. And so, a bit of the case study in my case. So I am currently a senior agile coach with a multi national retail organisation, if you read into my LinkedIn profile, you'll know which organisation that is. So there is this, there were these teams and when the organisation started its agile transformation about four years ago or something like thereabouts, for that team they were pivoted into agile, single agile team like team level team teams, OK. And then over time some further analysis was done and the leadership decided, that's a story for another day, but go with me here. So they decided they wanted it to be a SAFe ART and so the team was now being pivoted into the combined SAFe ART. Now I had joined the organisation after the initial, the first, you know, pivot to agile teams, and what I noticed interacting with those teams was that they, the teams, already struggled, because they were moving from a traditional projects management waterfall based approach to delivery into agile, and as agile teams, you know, scrum teams, Kanban teams, they were already struggling. I mean, they were delivering, it's almost like, have you ever had a toothache where you're able to eat, but how you ate and enjoyed your food when you had a toothache versus when your, when everything is OK, is much different. So they were delivering all right, but it's almost like you're chewing with a toothache, or hobbling with a bad foot, you're moving, but you're not moving in the most effective way you could. So I realised they had this problem, and just waving, if I could be a fairy godmother and wave the SAFe wand over them with all due respect, it wasn't going to make the problem go away. There was something we needed to get to the root cause. So, sometimes, yes, it's all about trying to make a light touch and as simple as possible reduce the cognitive load as Mariëlle said in the workshop earlier, but there are times that, you know, the hard things have to be done. There are times you have to strip down, get into the weeds, get into the detail, and based on the conversation with the RTE, I designed a session for the key roles, because those were the key points, if you know the theory of constraints, it's about looking at where the bottom leg is and then addressing the bottom leg to improve the flow, and of course you know as the system, because, you know, there would definitely be something else to improve, but right now the key bottom leg was with the Epic Owner roles, the product management roles, the product and scrum master roles, so those were the areas we decided to focus on, because you can't boil the ocean. So, the SLoMoSH Canvas. Now I wouldn't say that it all was original, but it's more of a synthesis of ideas , concepts, mental models that I've been exposed to over the past 20 years, but the main influence for this SLoMoSH Canvas was the work of Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur, the business model canvas, and of course when I last spoke with Alex Osterwalder, you know, I had him as a guest on my podcast , he said it's really about making things visual, it's important, it makes it easier for conversations, it helps people to get on the same page. And another influence in developing this was from the work of an executive coach known as Tony Jeary, Jeary with a J, and he wrote this book ‘Strategic Acceleration' and he had the MOLO matrix, which is like 'more of, less of'. So based on that I kind of developed this, which I was using as well for personal reasons, you know, in terms of thinking where do I want to be in the future, how do I get there, what do I need to do more of, less of, what do I need to stop entirely, hand over. And I kind of, as I was thinking about this in the middle of the night, I thought, this might work for the teams we're talking about. So let me explain the SLoMoSH Canvas. Has anyone figured out why it's named SLoMoSH? OK, here you go. Audience member It's the first letters OK, yes, so the first letters, Start, Less of, More of, then Stop and Handover. So that's where the SLoMoSH came from, and I'm still thinking of, is there anything better to call this, so if you have any ideas, please let me know. But that's what it's called. Now, the key thing, how does it work? It's more in the centre you have the core responsibilities, that would be, let's say, common to all the roles, it's better when you do it role by role, so if it's about a particular role, it's something you're facing, you have those responsibilities and tasks in the centre, and there's no change, no action needs to be done, and usually that would be a starting point, OK, for the conversation. Now, the actions that will come out in the conversation will be when you're now looking at those key things, you kind of have a conversation about it, as we'll look at it later, and then you  find out, are there things that you need to, that you should be doing that you're not doing that you should start, you put it there, and the other thing is that you should be doing as part of your role that you're not doing as often as you should, maybe put them in the ‘More of'. You know, ‘Less of' would be the reverse of ‘More of' and then other things ‘Stop'. This part is really important, because as human beings we are adverse to, you know, kind of losing things and taking things out, kind of losing things, we'd rather pile up things without taking off some other things consequently and that is a mindset that we, you know, because there should be the art of maximising the work, the amount of work not done. So it's also important to challenge your teams, are there things that you should stop doing, and stop means stop. Don't hand it over to anyone because it's not adding value now, it wasn't adding value then, it's not going to add value in the future. And then, just as important, is the Handover part. Are there things that you're doing in your current role or in the current context, which in the new role, in the new structure, which don't necessarily apply to you, what your role as you understand it now, but someone needs to do it or else things will fall through the cracks and it's going to impact on delivery, and that would be in the Handover space. OK. So, this if for you now, two minutes, can we all take the time to pause and reflect, and I acknowledge it might not be applicable to you, we all have different situations and contexts, problems that we're solving right now. So if it doesn't apply to you, that's fine. Can you pause and reflect individually on what you've heard so far. Think about scenarios in your current context, your current work, where you could use the Canvas, or where you have, you're needing to have the conversations that this Canvas could help you with. What are those scenarios? So it's an individual pause and think. Can anyone share the result of your conversations? Audience member We were just discussing challenges that we have in multiple teams and the conclusion of the challenge was the team motivation and the relationship with the team members started deteriorating due to the moving to remote working, right. So, there were misunderstandings about what the team lead needs to do, what the product owner needs to do, what the scrum master needs to do, or even every single member of the team. So, what we did, we did different kinds of workshops, but now, when I see this, it perfectly fits into the, what I think we could use, or what we could benefit a lot from this. It was not structured like you did, but this is more clear and straightforward, yeah. Ula Ojiaku Wow, thank you for that, and yes, I'll be sharing my context, so thank you for sharing that. We have just enough time for you. Audience member I think we can use this in our organisation. I'm working for the government, for the POVmark we call that, the Product Owner Vakgroep Manager and agile coach, it's like, we talk about the teams, but not about the individuals, but not about the teams, but what are we talking about? Because we say the product owner is there for the product, and the manager is there for the people, and the agile coach is there for the team. But sometimes it feels like no one has the responsibility so we can use this very wise to, hey, what can we stop talking about? Ula Ojiaku Awesome! Well thank you for sharing. Right, thank you. So, what did I do? Let's move on. So, a case study with the very team that I was talking about, a team of teams in this case. Now, something else I didn't share about the challenges they were facing was this, you know. Having gone to the training, because, let's say for example some of them were previously project managers and as part of the transformation pivot, you know, they were now set, OK, the way it was done is another conversation. And it was more of a combination of OK, where do you think we fit in now that, you know, this is what this role does, and that's what that role does. So it was a combination of that and, you know, my management kind of making joint decisions to give people new roles. And so as a traditional project manager, you'd expect that you're making sure things are on time, you budget and schedule, you liaise with third parties, maybe vendors as required to make sure everyone is cooperating. That's the traditional project management role. You're also, you'd also be monitoring the spend, how much are we spending on this project? You know, the financial reporting, the compliance, to make sure you're being compliant, and being a publicly traded organisation, you also have to make sure that, you know, on the straight and narrow, it's not directly giving value to the end customer, but it needs to be done if you want to operate as an organisation, if you want to be legally trading. So, these things still need to be done. But in the new roles, you know, the new product owner role generally, it doesn't have anything about managing compliance issues, it doesn't have anything about financial reporting, and so when we're operating as that agile team, these things were falling through the cracks. You could have said, yes, I used to be a project manager but now I'm a scrum master, there's nothing that says, you know, as a scrum master, that I need to do that same thing with the product. So, who does it, because it needs to be done. OK. So in this simplified example, let's assume we're doing this session with product owners. Now, I populated the core area, or the continuum area with the generic responsibilities that a product owner would do. Of course, this is not exhaustive, this is only for illustration. And then at the start of the session I'll be like, OK, now these are the things, you know, generic things that the product owner would need to do. But are there other things that you currently do that's not in the box? Feel free to create a sticky(note) and put it there, because we need to have a conversation, we need to make it visible. Because most people have what they do in their heads, and other people, remember the picture with the, you the bus and all that, and three people are looking at, one is seeing the driver, the other one is seeing the cargo, the other one is seeing the vehicle. So, let's all visualise it and talk through it. I told you sometimes you need to get into the weed of things so that everyone has a shared understanding. So, imagine that the ones or the items in the bold italics are the ones that I can't add in, oh, I also manage compliance issues, oh I also participate in release value, oh and I also produce reports for the senior management. Let's put it there. Now, after having the conversation, sticky by sticky, let's assume in this hypothetical session, this is what we came up with. So, remember in the core part it's more of whatever it is that you're doing and you're happy with it, you think you're doing OK, there's nothing that needs to change, that's fine, you leave it there. So, for, let's assume, that the product owner group you know, you already create to start the stories. We prioritise our backlog and we also participate in release planning  and we think it's relevant to where we're going so we have to keep stay there. But there might be other things that they have, you know, had a conversation about, and they say OK, you know what, we haven't really been conducting backlog refinement sessions and we need to do that a bit more, thoughtfully and, you know, we need to just start doing it basically. That goes in the start place. And maybe they say something about contributing to the product vision and roadmap, and say it's been someone else that's been doing that, the product manager has been doing that, but we feel like, you know, the, it trickles down to us and it comes as a surprise, we need to contribute earlier so that we can also give the team perspective into things, so we can put that in the ‘More of' etc etc. But the key thing is, it's about facilitating those conversations. And it doesn't stop here. Once we've done this part, it's now about focusing on the elements in the outer rectangle to identify what's the action that's required for this. So, if you said you don't facilitate or you don't do backlog refinement sessions, what action needs to be done and who's going to own it after this session? And they, as a group, you know, there's this saying, if they write it, they won't fight it. As a coach, as an agile coach, it's not about being the sage on the stage, it's about being their guide by their side. So you ask them, OK, so you have, and of your own free will, I didn't tell you to start doing it, but you said you do need to start doing it, so what are you going to do about it? Because, you know, if you tell them, then the ownership for following up with that action is going to be on me if I told them, but if they said, this is what we think we need to do, and this is who, I mean, I think I'll own it, then they're more likely to follow through with the actual action, so they will, you know, identify who owns it, what they're going to do, and the writing of the same happens with the rest of the items on the board. So for this case study, some of the outcomes were, there was an improved visibility and shared understanding of what people were doing. And of course, during the session, the fact that it was visual, it wasn't like a spreadsheet or a long Word document, not that there's anything wrong with it, but most people process, you know we all process information differently and having it visually on stickys helped with, you know, bringing or bridging that gap in communication and giving us a point of reference that we all could zone into. So, it helped with relevant conversations, both as a group and after the session they were also able to show this to their line management, and have necessary conversations with them. And for some of them, the product management group, they were able to demonstrate, because they would say, I had a lot on my plate, and the line management would be like, she's complaining again, but by the time we did this, and they showed an electronic copy of it to the line management, they said, oh, you actually do a whole lot, right, and that meant a case for an additional set of business analysts to be added to the team to help them with those sorts of things, to invent the responsibility on their plate. It enabled them to identify actions to move from their current state to the desired future state and, you know, they have also role descriptions that takes into account the context of the work they do, that they can share with their stakeholders, because there was a confusion about who does what. So, some facilitation tips as I round off this. It's more effective if you do it role by role. You know, don't try to boil the ocean, there are instances you can do it as a whole team, but my focus right now, on this case study, is more about, you know, on a role, so if it's for scum masters, within a team of teams, then bring them together so they have a joint understanding. If it's a product management, or product owner etc etc, but do it role by role, because that helps with focusing the session. And don't start with a blank slate. Prepopulate the centre of the board with generic responsibilities and then have them add things or remove things as they see fit. Now it's really about being a neutral facilitator in this process, because it's now them having conversations. Now, encourage conversation and debate whilst keeping focused on desirable outcomes and then remind them that, you know, this is not a once and done activity. Things will change, and as they do, you don't have to do it often, but as things change, and you feel they're significantly changed that you need to have another of these conversations, you do so, and inspect and adapt as required. So, before we summarise, what would be your key takeaway from this talk? Anyone? OK, I'll walk to you, I'm not throwing. Audience member  Thank you. Maybe we all recognise, because I also saw it in your model, that stopping and handover are mainly the most difficult topics to discuss. How did you handle those things? Because if you look at the model now, it doesn't seem a lot went off their plate.  More or less it shifted or put on their plate. Ula Ojiaku OK, I was asking for key takeaways, but you know, you've given me a question so I will answer that. No problem. So you said stopping and handover are the most important aspects, and how did I get them, keep them focused on that conversation? It's all about asking questions but I can't tell them you have to stop it, you need to have them come to a realisation and sometimes it's a conversation that you might have with them a few times before they come to the realisation themselves, but it's not about telling them what to do, so I, when I facilitate these sessions, I don't tell them what they need to do, I just ask questions to clarify, OK, what you are doing, do you think you still need to keep it? Yes, OK. Is it adding value to your stakeholders, your customers, does it make it more efficient, no? So why do you think we should keep it, because it's the way we've always done it. OK, so I leave it there and it might not be the right time to pursue it, but I try to encourage them to, you know, consider things that they can stop and handover. So it's a interfaced question and it's also like there's no one-size-fits-all-approach. But thank you very much sir for that question. So, I'll just round up. Classroom based training is almost never enough. We need to support them to kind of, make sense of whatever they've learnt, and teams, because they as teams and individuals sometimes, I personally sometimes struggle to apply what I've learnt in the classroom, on a course, into my real life context. So sometimes that additional support is needed, sometimes we have to roll up our sleeves and help them to have those conversations. And my humble submission is, would you consider using maybe the SLoMoSH Canvas for these sort of conversations, would that help you? For me, for the team that I've used it with, it's made things clearer for them. I wouldn't say it's a Fairy Godmother. You know, I wave the wand and they lived happily ever after, but that hobble has definitely gone. I'm now going to find a dentist to go help me on with the toothache, because there are always going to be problems to be solved. So, with that, that's all I have. Thank you so much for listening and for not falling asleep on me. That's all we have for now. Thanks for listening. If you liked this show, do subscribe at www.agileinnovationleaders.com or your favourite podcast provider. Also share with friends and do leave a review on iTunes. This would help others find this show. I'd also love to hear from you, so please drop me an email at ula@agileinnovationleaders.com Take care and God bless!

Olha o episódio novo do #Engcast saindo do forno! Dessa vez, falamos sobre como escolher entre as oportunidades para desenvolvedores neste mercado de TI que está tão aquecido. Quais são os fatores a se avaliar? O sensacional Jefferson Otoni, junto com um timaço – Camila Venâncio, Coord. de Cultura e Desenvolvimento e Helliton Carnaval, Head de Alianças | Engineering – vai te contar. Dá o play e saiba mais! Phones on! 24:20 – DICA TECH Livros: Scrum. A Arte de Fazer o Dobro do Trabalho na Metade do Tempo - Jeff Sutherland Código limpo: Habilidades práticas do Agile Software - Robert Cecil Martin Pipeline de liderança – Ram Charan A Startup Enxuta - Eric Ries Business Model Generation: Inovação em Modelos de Negócios - Alex Osterwalder e Yves Pigneur Canal: Código Fonte TV - https://www.youtube.com/user/codigofontetv Veja as nossas vagas para Devs e mais: http://engdb.me/VbFv9 Siga nossas redes: LinkedIn: @engineeringbr Instagram: @engineeringbr Youtube: @engineeringbrasil Blog: http://blog.engdb.com.br/

We're joined by Jim Euchner, author of Lean Startup in Large Organizations, and discuss how to overcome the "antibodies" that big companies have against experimentation (and why those antibodies are actually healthy). SHOW LINKS: - Jim's website: https://jimeuchner.com - Book url: https://leanstartup.biz - Lean Startup by Eric Ries : http://theleanstartup.com - Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank : https://bookshop.org/books/the-four-steps-to-the-epiphany-successful-strategies-for-products-that-win/9781119690351 - Alex Osterwalder, creator of the Business Model Canvas: https://www.alexosterwalder.com - Clayton Christensen, Innovator's Dilemma: https://bookshop.org/books/the-innovator-s-dilemma-when-new-technologies-cause-great-firms-to-fail/9781633691780 --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. 
 Email us at info@agileconversations.com

How well do you serve your clients? Do you understand them well? Can you measure the impact you have on them? Join me and Alex as we discuss his famous tool, the Value Proposition Canvas. This is one of the most powerful tools you can use to map out the jobs, pains and gains your clients are looking for. We share examples and talk more about how you can use this tools even before creating your first product. Dr. Alexander (Alex) Osterwalder is one of the world's most influential strategy and innovation experts, a leading author, entrepreneur, and in-demand speaker whose work has changed the way established companies do business and how new ventures get started. Together with Yves Pigneur, he invented the Business Model Canvas, Value Proposition Canvas, and Business Portfolio Map - practical tools that are trusted by millions of business practitioners from leading global companies including Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Nestlé, MasterCard, Sony, Fujitsu, 3M, Intel, Roche, Colgate-Palmolive, and many more. Listen out for: What is the value proposition canvas and why this tool was needed How most companies who skip this step end up wasting time and money How you can find more information about your clients (or potential clients) How it all fits together to give you the best tool to design effective sales and marketing. Bonus: Get a copy of Value Proposition Design See the value proposition explained in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReM1uqmVfP0 Go to Sellingwithlove.com for video access to the show or directly to youtube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5VaR6Z3wfElWFZn64ugOBw New to Selling with Love Podcast? I'd love to connect with you. You can find me, your host, Jason Marc Campbell on the following Channels: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jasonmarccampbell LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonmarccampbell/ *Selling with Love Podcast was previously known as Superhumans at Work by Mindvalley.

This article originally appeared on the Customer Success Leadership Network blog. We are thinking about customer success all wrong. We think it’s a function. A department. A post-sales team. The enlightened among us think customer success is a philosophy or even an organizational design principle. That’s better, but still not quite right. I mean, what am I supposed to do with “customer success is a philosophy?” I have no idea. After spending two and a half years running a SaaS business as a general manager with P&L ownership, I have come to this realization in my thinking: customer success is a business model innovation.To understand what I mean by business model innovation, we must first define business model. According to Alex Osterwalder, “a business model describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value.”Notice the three parts of this definition: create, deliver, and capture value. All three are required in order for a business model to work. A mistake I see customer success teams make is focusing solely on “delivers,” ignoring “creates,” and “captures.” When a customer success team over-indexes on delivering value, the primary purpose becomes retaining customers, which seems like a noble pursuit until you examine the behaviors of a retention mindset.The downside of a retention mindsetRetaining customers is defensive. The mindset is, “If we are going to retain this customer, we have to get them to log in more or get them to use the software more or build a better relationship with the champion or get them to understand the value they are currently realizing. We must compel or persuade customers to act in ways we want them to act.” When a customer renews, we are relieved that we got the renewal at the same price as the last contract. We celebrate it. I know what you are thinking, “Bill, that is a good thing. We saved/retained/turned around that customer by delivering value. What’s the problem?”I see two [business model] problems.You didn’t create new value.You didn’t capture a portion of that new value.Here’s another way to look at it. A CEO came to me for advice on how to get her team to focus on net revenue retention (NRR) and said to me, “You know, I see my teams celebrate all these renewals, but I don’t see the value of the contracts going up. All of our costs are going up, including the raises everyone wants, but the prices we charge customers are not. This is not gonna work.” This is what happens when a software subscription business focuses primarily on delivering value and retaining customers. There is no “what’s next.” No forward-thinking about how to continuously help customers grow.The upside of business model thinkingSoftware companies that understand their business model get all of their teams rowing in the same direction by getting everyone involved in all three parts of the business model:Create valueDeliver valueCapture valueThe “what’s next” mindset is built into the system (your business model). There is no need to upsell or for account managers to sweep in to “close the deal” or argue about who should own the renewal or waste energy on debates about whether people can sell AND be a trusted advisor. You will understand how this is possible as you read further.A well-designed business model answers the question, “What’s next?” It creates a flywheel effect of the following: Step 1: Create “something” that solves a problemStep 2: Deliver that “something” to a customerStep 3: Capture 10% to 15% of the value of that “something” with reasonable pricingStep 4: Repeat this process with existing customers. FOREVER.Steps one through three are simple in the sense that most software companies already do this. The founder noticed a problem in the world, built a product to solve it, and found customers willing to pay for that solution. Step four is where the magic happens, where the flywheel can start turning, and where many software companies mis-understand their business model. A well-designed business model answers the question, “What’s next?” When you get to step four, I assume you have already delivered on the one main value proposition that new customers bought your product to address in the first place; and that the product has been designed to address. Step four is about “What’s next?” More precisely: “What is the next value proposition you intend to help a customer achieve; and if we do help a customer achieve that next value proposition, how much of that next, new value will we capture?” Pause and think about that for a moment, and while you do, let me ask those two questions differently.What value proposition can we deliver next?What offering (that we must create) can a customer buy in order to achieve that next value proposition? To over simplify what is happening here. If we operated our customer success in accordance with the business model innovation, at each renewal cycle (ideally before) we would identify the next value proposition that we are positioned to help the customer achieve. Better yet, the customer would identify the next value they want to achieve. We create an offering (or select an existing one) that will help the customer achieve this next value, and we charge a price such that a customer is willing to pay because of the value they will realize. “If we do this, we will save $100, I’d love to pay you $10 to do that. Where do I sign?”So the flywheel of the business model innovation (step four from above) is:Create valueDeliver valueCapture valueCreate next valueDeliver next valueCapture next valueCreate next next valueDeliver next next valueCapture next next valueRepeat. Forever.It is similar to what Rav Dhaliwal calls the continuous sale. What Dave Jackson calls the next best value. If you look through the lens of business model innovation, you transcend debates about who owns the renewal, the customer relationship, and a quota. The business model is designed more like an algorithm and less like a customer journey with owners and silos and hand-offs and confused customers, “Who are you again? My account manager? Then what’s my customer success manager for? Wait, I should call my technical account manager for that? When do I call support? Oh, I should have put in a ticket instead of calling you? Sorry. I’ll try to get it right next time.”All of this noise and friction becomes unnecessary. Business model innovation is a customer success algorithmThe business model innovation of customer success is an algorithm with the following rules: IF a customer wants to realize this value proposition, THEN they need to buy that offering. IF a customer wants to realize the next value proposition, THEN they need to buy the next offering. Your job is to work with multiple teams in your company and write as many IF/THEN statements as you can, such that you can help your customers. FOREVER. We called it “first” value for a reasonWe, customer success teams, just need to take one more step in our evolution. We are concerned with helping customers achieve value. One of our most important charters is to help customers achieve “first value” and help customers accelerate “time to first value.” All I am suggesting is that we don’t forget that we inserted the word “first” for a reason; because we know there is more value that we can create, deliver, and capture. My call to action to you is this. Write down a list of value propositions that you could help your customers achieve over time. Then, prioritize that list using the model above, answering the question, “What’s the next value proposition I can help customers realize? And what is the next one after that?” Then write down the list of offerings you have (or need to create) in order to help your customers achieve those value propositions; and capture some of it. Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

An interview with David Bland. David is a Lean consultant who aims to help you make good business decisions by testing your business ideas and making sure they're worth pursuing. He's doing this through his day job as founder of Precoil, and also as the co-author of "Testing Business Ideas", a desk reference with 44 different experimental techniques you can use to do the same. We talk about a lot, including: The story behind "Testing Business Ideas", the idea behind the visual design, and how it's part of a box set that will make you the ultimate businessperson Whether there's anything he would have change from his book based on his work since, and whether there are any new techniques that people should be considering Some of the preconditions you need to have in your organisation to enable an experimentation culture, and whether this can work at all stages of a company How to tackle the reluctance to experiment with customers, either because they're seen as too important or because the company leadership think they already know what they want The importance of ethical experiments, and making sure you're working with customers & not on them or against them How assumption mapping can help land the idea of risk of desirability, feasibility, viability risks and how this framing can help pierce leaders' reality distortion fields The importance of balancing discovery & delivery and ensuring that discovery & validation is part of the work, not an optional extra And much more! Buy "Testing Business Ideas" "7 out of 10 new products fail to deliver on expectations. Testing Business Ideas aims to reverse that statistic. In the tradition of Alex Osterwalder's global bestseller Business Model Generation, this practical guide contains a library of hands-on techniques for rapidly testing new business ideas."   Check it out on Amazon or Goodreads. Contact David If you want to catch up with David, you can reach him on Twitter or LinkedIn. You can also check out his work at Precoil.

Lähes kaikilla bisneksillä on jotain yhteistä: Alex Osterwalder.Toimittajana Tuomas Peltomäki, vieraana Veera Luoma-aho.Tämä podcast julkaistiin 15.12.2021.#hsvisio #hsvisiopodcast Lisäksi podcastissa: -> Kuuma metsäaihe tuoreen ympäristöministerin käsittelyssä-> Yhdysvaltain keskuspankki julkaisee ohjauskorkonsaLyhyt ilmoitus: HS Visio on talouteen, politiikkaan ja teknologiaan keskittyvä sivusto, jonka jutut ilmestyvät osana Helsingin Sanomien tilausta. Ne löytyvät HS:n sovelluksesta ja osoitteesta HS.fi. Jos sulla ei ole vielä HS:n tilausta, voit kokeilla sitä kaksi viikkoa osoitteesta hs.fi/parempaakuunneltavaa.Oheinen video on osa HS Visio -podcastia, joka julkaistaan yleisimmissä podcast-palveluissa arkiaamuisin kello 5.30. Podcastissa avataan päivän tärkeimmän uutisen merkitys ja kerrotaan lyhyesti, mitä uutisnotifikaatioita puhelimiin on päivän aikana luvassa.Tilaa podcast mieleiseesi appiin näistä linkeistä:Supla: http://bit.ly/suplavisioSpotify: http://bit.ly/spotifyvisioApple: http://bit.ly/applepodcastvisioGoogle Podcasts: http://bit.ly/googlepodcastvisiosekä HS:n sovelluksesta Kuuntele, Podcastit.Vanhat jaksot löydät HS.fi:stä: http://bit.ly/visiopodcast.Tämän podcastin pääjuttu julkaistaan myös videomuotoisena:Youtube: http://bit.ly/youtubevisioInstagram: http://bit.ly/instagramvisioTwitter: http://bit.ly/twittervisioHS VISIO on Helsingin Sanomien julkaisema talouteen, politiikkaan ja ulkomaan uutisiin keskittyvä sivusto, joka ilmestyy joka päivä osoitteessa HS.fi ja Helsingin Sanomien välissä lauantaisin. Podcastin vastaava tuottaja on Tuomas Peltomäki. HS Vision esimies on Jussi Pullinen ja Helsingin Sanomien vastaava päätoimittaja on Kaius Niemi.Lisätietoja HS Visiosta: https://www.hs.fi/visio.

"We don't write books, we craft spreads." Dr. Alex Osterwalder and his book co-authors pioneered the landscape, full-color, creative visuals format for simplifying complex business ideas. They consider every page of their books as a user interface, optimizing for simplicity, clarity, and fun. "Visuals don't become lipstick on a pig, they become an essential part of the reader's experience." There's good news and bad news today: the good news, I know you will love what Alex shares about simplifying complexity. The bad news? My track didn't record! So consider this a masterclass of sorts :) More About Alex: Dr. Alexander (Alex) Osterwalder is one of the world's most influential innovation experts whose work has changed the way established companies do business and how new ventures get started. His company Strategyzer provides online courses, applications, and technology-enabled services to help organizations effectively and systematically manage strategy, growth, and transformation. Alex is the co-author of a suite of beautifully designed bestselling books in the Strategyzer Series including Business Model Generation, Value Proposition Design, Testing Business Ideas, The Invincible Company, and his latest, High-Impact Tools for Teams. ❤️ Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. Free Time is listener-supported—consider donating to become a podcast BFF and you'll get access to a monthly Q&A call with Jenny and private feed.

“If CEO's are not spending 30-40% of their time on innovation, innovation won't happen” – Alex Osterwalder. In this episode, Pernille Hertel, Director of Customer Advisory for SAS Institute in the Nordics, interviews, Alex Osterwalder, Author, Speaker, Entrepreneur and Business Thinker, and Arild Spandow, CEO of Amesto Group who for the last two years has been ranked as one of Norway's 25 most innovative companies. In this episode we talk about out why leaders need to radically rethink innovation. This podcast was recorded on September 29th at Oslo Business Forum 2021 where the theme was Rethinking Business. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Nicol Verheem: Teradek Nicol Verheem is a globally recognized leader and innovator, senior business executive, serial entrepreneur, and prolific angel investor. He has been recognized for his impact in the film industry with a lifetime achievement award from the Society of Camera Operators and an Academy Award for Sciences and Engineering, also known as a Technical Oscar. He was also recently recognized with the Innovator of the Year Award from the leading business journal in Orange County, California. Nicol currently serves on the Executive Management Board of The Vitec Group, as the Divisional CEO of Creative Solutions, and as the CEO of Teradek. As a technology leader, his is responsible for the strategy, roadmap, and execution of Teradek's highly recognized high tech video products driving more than $100M annual revenue -- with dominant market share across the globe. He is also a member of the Coaching for Leaders Academy. In this conversation, Nicol and I discuss how to take the ideas you hear in books, presentations, and podcasts — and make them your own. Nicol shares many examples of how he has done this in his organization in order grow a team that was ultimately recognized with an Academy Award. Plus, we discuss some of his mindsets that have helped drive the success of Teradek over the years. Key Points Leadership models aren't always molded to your organization or situation. Adapt the idea to make it a better fit for you. Well intended language by an expert might not match the culture of your organization. Don't hesitate to change a word or phrase to make sense to your team. Build relationships today with the people who will grow with you throughout your career. That's “networking for commoners.” When interviewing, ask people about their hobbies or interests in order to discover if you can lead them to live out their passions. Resources Mentioned We'd Like to Thank the Academy by Teradek Related Episodes How to Know What You Don't Know, with Art Markman (episode 437) How to Build an Invincible Company, with Alex Osterwalder (episode 470) Start Finding Overlooked Talent, with Johnny Taylor, Jr. (episode 544) Discover More Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic.

Dr. Alexander (Alex) Osterwalder is one of the world's most influential innovation experts, a leading author, entrepreneur, and in-demand speaker whose work has changed the way established companies do business and how new ventures get started. Ranked No. 4 of the top 50 management thinkers worldwide, Alex is known for simplifying the strategy development process and turning complex concepts into digestible visual tools. Together with Yves Pigneur, he invented the Business Model Canvas, Value Proposition Canvas, and Business Portfolio Map—practical tools that are trusted by millions of business practitioners from leading global companies. And they really introduced into the strategy dialogue the idea that business models can be intentionally—and creatively—designed. Strategyzer, Alex's company, is on a mission to evolve large established companies so that they inspire and activate and liberate their employees to be innovators. They do this using online courses, applications, and technology-enabled platforms. His books include the international bestseller Business Model Generation, Value Proposition Design, Testing Business Ideas, The Invincible Company, and the recently launched High-Impact Tools for Teams.In this podcast he shares: Why innovation MUST begin with your culture Why if there were only ONE metric you should be tracking to unleash innovation, it should be your “innovation kill rate” Real-world examples of large enterprises who have been able to transform into agile, innovate organizations, proving it CAN be done __________________________________________________________________________________________"So there are now those outliers who have done exactly that. They invested in innovation, but it's not just the money, they gave innovation power and they created this ecosystem for exploration, with tons of failures. They hold up their failures—same thing as Amazon. They hold up their failures and say, "You can't succeed without failures, and the bigger you get, the bigger your failures. But you know that's the system you need to create for the winners to emerge. So, failure's never the goal, but it's an inevitable side consequence of exploration."-Alex Osterwalder__________________________________________________________________________________________Episode Timeline:00:00—Introducing Alex Osterwalder + The topic of today's episode2:05—What is your definition of strategy?3:01—What got you interested in strategy?4:01—Could you explain a "dual culture"?5:50—What are the drivers of culture?8:09—What are you most well-known for?11:16—What should a CEO be encouraging to engage innovative behavior?14:30—What is the key lesson people should take away from the case studies you've described?16:20—What do most companies get wrong?18:07—What's a belief that you've changed your mind about?19:54—What are you working on now, and how can people engage with you?__________________________________________________________________________________________Additional Resources:Personal website: https://www.alexosterwalder.com/Strategyzer Website: https://www.strategyzer.com/

Dr. Alexander (Alex) Osterwalder is one of the world's most influential innovation experts, a leading author, entrepreneur, and in-demand speaker whose work has changed the way established companies do business and how new ventures get started. Ranked No. 4 of the top 50 management thinkers worldwide, Alex is known for simplifying the strategy development process and turning complex concepts into digestible visual tools. Together with Yves Pigneur, he invented the Business Model Canvas, Value Proposition Canvas, and Business Portfolio Map—practical tools that are trusted by millions of business practitioners from leading global companies. And they really introduced into the strategy dialogue the idea that business models can be intentionally—and creatively—designed. Strategyzer, Alex's company, is on a mission to evolve large established companies so that they inspire and activate and liberate their employees to be innovators. They do this using online courses, applications, and technology-enabled platforms. His books include the international bestseller Business Model Generation, Value Proposition Design, Testing Business Ideas, The Invincible Company, and the recently launched High-Impact Tools for Teams.In this podcast he shares: Why innovation MUST begin with your culture Why if there were only ONE metric you should be tracking to unleash innovation, it should be your “innovation kill rate” Real-world examples of large enterprises who have been able to transform into agile, innovate organizations, proving it CAN be done __________________________________________________________________________________________"So there are now those outliers who have done exactly that. They invested in innovation, but it's not just the money, they gave innovation power and they created this ecosystem for exploration, with tons of failures. They hold up their failures—same thing as Amazon. They hold up their failures and say, "You can't succeed without failures, and the bigger you get, the bigger your failures. But you know that's the system you need to create for the winners to emerge. So, failure's never the goal, but it's an inevitable side consequence of exploration."-Alex Osterwalder__________________________________________________________________________________________Episode Timeline:00:00—Introducing Alex Osterwalder + The topic of today's episode2:05—What is your definition of strategy?3:01—What got you interested in strategy?4:01—Could you explain a "dual culture"?5:50—What are the drivers of culture?8:09—What are you most well-known for?11:16—What should a CEO be encouraging to engage innovative behavior?14:30—What is the key lesson people should take away from the case studies you've described?16:20—What do most companies get wrong?18:07—What's a belief that you've changed your mind about?19:54—What are you working on now, and how can people engage with you?__________________________________________________________________________________________Additional Resources:Personal website: https://www.alexosterwalder.com/Strategyzer Website: https://www.strategyzer.com/

“We bring all of the tools and methods into everything we do for the companies we work with. We call it technology enabled services. We help large companies like MasterCard, WL Gore, Nestle, and so on, reinvent themselves.”This is Alex Osterwalder, entrepreneur, author and co-founder of Strategyzer.com. Alex believes that innovation is what your business needs for longevity and success. He also believes that successful companies are those that compete at the level of business model, not just at the level of product, service, or price. “Innovation is not a talent or idea problem. It's a process and culture problem. Companies are not putting in place the right systems for the great innovators and great ideas to emerge. People on the ground know very well what could work, but we don't give them the space to explore. And if that doesn't change, a lot of companies are actually going to pay the price and go out of business.”Alex knows what the challenges are in driving innovation. He knows what needs to be done in terms of structure, power and resources. And he knows how company culture fits into a business model. And in this incredibly insightful episode, he shares his thoughts and actionable processes with listeners. “An invincible company has three characteristics - they always reinvent themselves, they compete not just on products, technology, price and service, they compete on superior business models. And they understand transcending industry boundaries. People who see themselves in one industry, usually that's not going to play out well in the long term.”It's a slightly longer episode, so make sure you're sitting comfortably, and don't forget to bring a pen and paper, you'll want to take notes. On today's podcast:Creating an innovation culture in a companyRethinking business models and business R&DTranscending industry boundariesEntrepreneurial CEOs don't have to be foundersInnovation needs money and power to succeedThe monetary value of experienceLinks:Book - The Invincible CompanyBook - Business Model Generation

– Når det går bra, er det vanskelig å tenke på fremtiden. Men tenk på hvor mange selskaper som har vært på toppen, for så å forsvinne. Ting kan forandre seg veldig fort, sier Alexander Osterwalder. Den sveitsiske forfatteren, foredragsholderen, konsulenten og innovasjonseksperten skal holde et av hovedinnleggene under Oslo Business Forum den 29. september. I episode 35 av podkasten All In med Oslo Business Forum, kommer han i samtalen med Tor Haugnes innom hvordan selskaper forblir konkurransedyktige i usikre tider, hva forskjellen er mellom strategi og innovasjon og hva som er oppskriften for å bli uovervinnelig. I denne podkastepisoden kan du høre mer om: – Hva kjennetegner en god innovatør? – Hvorfor definerer Osterwalder noen businessmodeller som døende? – Hvordan kan ledere unngå å investere masse penger i innovasjon, uten å få noe som helst igjen for det? Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to episode #781 of Six Pixels of Separation. Here it is: Six Pixels of Separation - Episode #781 - Host: Mitch Joel. When it comes to innovation, the thinking (and work) of Tendayi Viki is unparalleled. He is also an author and innovation consultant. Currently, he is an Associate Partner at Strategyzer (home of Alex Osterwalder), where he helps large organizations innovate for the future while managing their core business. Tendayi co-designed Pearson's Product Lifecycle which is an innovation framework that won the Best Innovation Program 2015 at the Corporate Entrepreneur Awards in New York. He has been shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Innovation Award and was named on the Thinkers50 2018 Radar List for emerging management thinkers to watch. Tendayi has written three books based on his research and consulting experience, Pirates In The Navy (his latest), The Corporate Startup and The Lean Product Lifecycle. Enjoy the conversation... Running time: 59:11. Hello from beautiful Montreal. Subscribe over at Apple Podcasts. Please visit and leave comments on the blog - Six Pixels of Separation. Feel free to connect to me directly on Facebook here: Mitch Joel on Facebook. or you can connect on LinkedIn. ...or on Twitter. Here is my conversation with Tendayi Viki. Pirates In The Navy. The Corporate Startup. The Lean Product Lifecycle. Strategyzer. Follow Tendayi on LinkedIn. Follow Tendayi on Twitter. This week's music: David Usher 'St. Lawrence River'.    

Mau Lamas is the Founder and CEO at Kiperfy, a property management app and SaaS solution bringing transparency, security communication and financial control to the space. Mau is a Mexican Entrepreneur that moved to Mexico City to officially start the company in 2017, where they are now the leading property management solution in Mexico. Mau also the creator of the Entrepreneur's club UltraFounder, creating a podcast and networking platform between founders, universities and companies.  He also created the Foundation: MásVida, helping homeless people reintegrate with their communities through Physical, Emotional, and Economical evaluations. Welcome Mau, super excited to have you on the SaaS District show today! During this interview we cover: 00:00 Postalytics, Stand Out With Direct Mail Automation 01:18 - Intro 01:34 - How Different is it to be a Successful Entrepreneur in Mexico 05:12 - What's the one Important Thing When it comes to Hiring? 07:38 - Managing & Productivity Hacks to Keep the Team Engaged 10:47 - Advice Mau Would Tell His 25 Years Old Self 12:24 - Biggest Challenges Mau's Facing Right Now? 14:25 - Instrumental Resources for Mau's Success 17:56 - What does Success Mean to Mau Today 22:02 - Get in Touch with Mau People: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs (Steve Jobs) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Hsieh (Tony Shae) Books: https://www.naphill.org/ (Think & Grow Rich) https://www.strategyzer.com/canvas (Alex Osterwalder) https://brendon.com/blog/high-performancehabits/ (High Performance Habits) Get In Touch With Mau: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mau-lamas-g-6a141724/ (Mau's Linkedin) https://ultrafounder.podbean.com/ (The Ultra Founder Podcast) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpHa09CvwslXInmUv0RBRvQ (Mau Lamas) Quotes: “Beyond Scarcity, there's Success.” Tag us & follow: https://www.facebook.com/HorizenCapitalOfficial/ (Facebook)  https://www.facebook.com/HorizenCapitalOfficial/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/horizen-capital (LinkedIn)  https://www.linkedin.com/company/horizen-capital https://www.instagram.com/saasdistrict/ (Instagram)  https://www.instagram.com/saasdistrict/ (https://www.instagram.com/saasdistrict/) More about Akeel: Twitter - https://twitter.com/AkeelJabber (https://twitter.com/AkeelJabber) LinkedIn - https://linkedin.com/in/akeel-jabbar (https://linkedin.com/in/akeel-jabbar) More Podcast Sessions - https://horizencapital.com/saas-podcast (https://horizencapital.com/saas-podcast)

"Calm down, take a deep breath and just talk to me“   Luke Hohmann's new mission: Participatory Budgeting in Schools Luke Hohmann founded FirstRoot to advance participatory budgeting in schools. Let me get straight to the point: You can invest in this company in this early stage. You can also support the cause by talking about or by simply using the free software and talking about it in your kids' school.  Luke Hohmann and me go back a long time. I met him ca. 12 years ago in one of his trainings and was fortunate enough to co-train and facilitate with him. He wrote an early book „Beyond Software Architecture“ which to me is one of the best books on software Architecture (sic!) and was ahead of its time. He then got deep into Serious Games with his Innovation Games trainings and a great book on it. Also ahead of its time. From there he was on a constant path towards which had to end in what he does now. Through his Innovation Games, he made it to participatory budgeting in communities, in the Enterprise and other important places. Also, he built an enterprise SaaS company to further bring his ideas deeper into Companies and also enable distributed Serious Games. Now, he founded FirstRoot, bringing participatory budgeting to schools. (You will realize over the course of the pod, that we couldn't constrain ourselves - we wouldn't be Luke and Markus, then - from drawing all kinds of parallels to Quality of Software, agile, Portfolio Planning, Architecture, Comics for Story Mapping and what have you.) The underlying problem that Luke is tackling with FirstRoot is inequality of chances by social background, financial illiteracy (lack of education on that topic in school in general) and economic disparity. First Root is having its part in solving that problem by offering a five step process in facilitating Participatory Budgeting to pupils around the globe, based on a software solution. Steps are: Planning Gather Ideas Refine Ideas to proposals Voting (there will always be more ideas than we can afford - „a truism in life“ Projects in implematation In the pod Luke thoroughly leads us through an example to show us how it works and which impact it has. I put the core of the idea at the beginning of the cast. Again: If you believe in this story, you can also invest for as little as a couple of hundred dollars alongside of people like Alex Osterwalder, Lysa Adkins and many more. You also help by just using the software and bring it into schools. Just follow the „Invest“ link on firstroot.co

Many presenters and musicians treat concerts and opera performances almost in a religious way. Only enlightened people are allowed to worship the high art of classical music. The end of the COVID19 pandemic allows us to rethink that. A great first step is observing audience members and listening to them. The book, Bernhard mentions, is Value Proposition Design by Alex Osterwalder & al. -> https://www.strategyzer.com/books/value-proposition-design. If you are interested in the Be Your Own Manager Courses on career management and entrepreneurship for classical musicians, you find the details here: www.beyourownmanager.com. To find out more about Bernhard Kerres go to www.bernhardkerres.com.

Visit www.agileinnovationleaders.com for the full episode shownotes (including interview transcript and bonus resources - free chapter of Where to Play and Navigator worksheets). Guest Bio: Dr. Marc Gruber is full professor at the College of Management of Technology at EPFL where he holds the Chair of Entrepreneurship and Technology Commercialization (ENTC) and was Vice President for Innovation at EPFL in the 2017-2021 presidency period. Marc also acted as Associate (2013-2016) and as Deputy Editor (2017-2020) at the Academy of Management Journal (AMJ), the highest ranked empirical research journal in the management domain. Furthermore, Marc is co-author of the book “Where to Play: 3 Steps for Discovering Your Most Valuable Market Opportunities”, which introduces the Market Opportunity Navigator – a practical business tool that was recently added to the ‘Lean Startup' toolset by Steve Blank and is used by tens of thousands of startups and established firms to improve their capabilities in opportunity identification and new wealth creation. Marc Gruber joined EPFL in the fall of 2005 coming from the Munich School of Management, University of Munich (LMU), where he held the position as vice-director of the Institute of Innovation Research, Technology Management and Entrepreneurship (INNOtec) and established the LMU's Center for Entrepreneurship. He has held several visiting scholar posts at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, where he conducts research on technology commercialization and entrepreneurship. He is also a visiting professor at the Business School of Imperial College, London. Marc has published his research on innovation, strategy and entrepreneurship in several leading journals such as the Academy of Management Journal, Management Science, Strategic Management Journal, and the Journal of Business Venturing. In an independent research study on the most impactful entrepreneurship scholars (Gupta et al., 2016), Marc was ranked as the worldwide #1 researcher in entrepreneurship for the 2005-2015 period (shared #1 spot), and among the worldwide top 5 for the 2000-2015 period. Beyond his research work, he is currently authoring a textbook on technology commercialization and was the co-editor of a textbook on entrepreneurship as well as a regular contributor to a weekly column on entrepreneurship in the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”. Marc Gruber received a doctorate from the University of St. Gallen (UNISG) in 2000. In spring 2005, he received a venia legendi from the Munich School of Management (LMU) for his habilitation thesis on marketing in new ventures.     Websites/ Resource URLs Where to Play website: https://wheretoplay.co/ Download WhereToPlay_Part1_Sample Chapter pdf here Download Navigator and Worksheets here Steve Blank's Blog on Flyability https://steveblank.com/2019/05/07/how-to-stop-playing-target-market-roulette-a-new-addition-to-the-lean-toolset/ Steve Blank's Blog on the Market Opportunity Navigator https://steveblank.com/2020/06/23/winners-rising-out-of-the-crisis-where-to-find-new-markets-and-customers/ Scott Shane's article on Prior Knowledge and the Discovery of Entrepreneurial Opportunities https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/orsc.11.4.448.14602 MIT articles on commercializing 3D printing: http://meche.mit.edu/news-media/new-era-3d-printing https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/innovation-lessons-from-3-d-printing/   Marc Gruber contact/ social media: Email: mark.gruber@epfl.ch LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbgruber/ Twitter: @MarcBGruber   Books/ Resources: Where to Play: 3 Steps to Discovering Your Most Valuable Market Opportunities by Marc Gruber and Sharon Tal Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products That Win by Steve Blank The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step by Step Guide for Building a Great Company by Steve Blank and Bob Dorf The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses  by Eric Ries Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers by Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want by Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur The End of Competitive Advantage: How to Keep Your Strategy Moving as Fast as Your Business by Rita Gunther McGrath The Theory of the Growth of the Firm by Edith Penrose The Entrepreneurial Mindset: Strategies for Continuously Creating Opportunity in an Age of Uncertainty by Rita McGrath and Ian MacMillan   Related podcast episodes Steve Blank (Episode 1): http://podcast.agileinnovationleaders.com/website/1-steve-blank-on-the-need-for-innovation-showing-up-and-learning-from-failure Alex Osterwalder (Episode 3): http://podcast.agileinnovationleaders.com/website/s1e003-alex-osterwalder-on-the-3-characteristics-of-invincible-companies-and-how-he-stays-grounded-as-a-leader Sharon Tal (Episode 6): http://podcast.agileinnovationleaders.com/website/s1e005-sharon-tal-on-how-to-identify-the-best-market-opportunities-for-your-ideas-or-innovations-in-a-structured-way   Interview Transcript Ula:  00:26 Hi everyone. My guest today is Dr Marc Gruber. He is a full professor at the College of Management of Technology at EPFL (a Science & Technology Higher Education Institution located in Switzerland). Marc is also the Chair of Entrepreneurship and Technology Commercialisation at EPFL and amongst his numerous other achievements, he co-authored the book Where to Play: 3 Steps for Discovering Your Most Valuable Market Opportunities with Dr Sharon Tal. This episode complements the conversation I'd had with Sharon in Episode 6. This time around, Marc shares his side of the story behind the book. He also explains how the Market Opportunity Navigator fits in with other Lean Start Up tools like the Business Model Canvas, Customer Discovery & Development, etc. With no further ado, ladies and gentlemen, my conversation with Marc Gruber. Enjoy! Ula:  01:35 Dr Marc Gruber, thank you so much for joining me on the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. Marc Gruber:  01:41 Thank you very much for inviting me Ula. It is a pleasure to be here. Ula:  01:45 So, let's get started. Marc, I understand that you love art, can you tell me more about that? Marc Gruber:  01:52 I'm a very visual person. That's why I think early on, I developed this love for art. You know, I like to go to museums, galleries, etc. and I think it inspired my research work, how I write, but also the tools that I develop for managers, for entrepreneurs… Because it should be visual.  It should be appealing. This is an interesting combination, because it combined somehow your love for the artistic, but also your research, you are typically very scientific, you are very rigorous and structured. And I think combining both worlds, it's actually quite an exciting journey. Ula:  02:26 Hmmm… Now, that's interesting. So, can you give me an example where your love for art has inspired your research work? Marc Gruber:  02:35 Well, I … it's less that it would inspire my research work in the sense that I have a concrete research question based on it. But it's more like, whenever I write, you know, write a paper or article, I think I have this… it can be a nice paragraph. But I know that I could always improve on that. It's more like a feeling that I have, that I think that there's an artistic quality towards writing research papers, that's where I see a lot of parallels. Because it's, in some sense, I when I write and there's a mistake, or there's something not so nice in the paragraph, I somehow view it, I see it, that's the link where art comes in… it can be improved. And same with music, you can hear if there's something that can be improved. Ula:  03:16 Now, that's an interesting analogy. I've also heard Steve Blank, say entrepreneurs are artists, and a good artist knows that the first instance of their work can never be the last one, there's always iterations. Marc Gruber:  03:31 Exactly. And I think that's when you write a nice research paper, or write any book or develop a tool, it should be the same type of instinct. You want to improve on it. You want to … not only do your best, but it has some intrinsic quality that you're trying to achieve that satisfies you. Ula:  03:49 Interesting, so do you paint also? Marc Gruber:  03:52 Yeah, I should make more time for it. There's no time now. I'm more of a passive art lover nowadays. When I go to conferences to give speeches, I like to go to the museums and galleries and check out the new artists, the established ones. You know, so it's, this is kind of nice because once in a while you see a nice piece, and then you acquire it and then, it travels with you for life, because you have it. Being one of these people, I like to collect these things, I would never sell them. Ula:  04:22 Who's your favorite artist? Marc Gruber:  04:24 My favorite one is Gerhard Richter from Germany. He's now 86 or so, he's a very accomplished person. He's one of the few who have truly shaped three, four different styles in art - coming up with them, you know. So you had Picasso with his different periods, but Richter has his very abstract art, and some photorealistic art, and so on. So, you really shape three, four different types of art movements in that sense. And that's quite impressive, because most artists are happy and satisfied if they can do one thing, you know, one type of trademark art, and he has done multiple. That's quite unique. Then you try to, as someone who likes art, try to understand what's the intrinsic quality that cuts across all of them. Ula:  05:05 So, the feeling of knowing when something is finished, is it like a satisfaction or a sense of pride… is something you can describe with words? Marc Gruber:  05:14 It's difficult to describe with words, but definitely, it's satisfaction - you like it. It matches your own aspirations. And you know it deep down and then you become immune to what reviewers would say.   So you think, ‘Ok, I've done the work that I enjoy'. It doesn't mean that I'm neglecting what the reviewers would say, that's an intellectual stimulus that you get then from the outside.  Ula:  05:37 Now moving on to your book, Where to Play: Three Steps for Discovering Your Most Valuable Market Opportunities. So, you co-authored this book with Sharon Tal. Can you tell us a bit about the inspiration behind this book? Marc Gruber:  05:53 This book goes back… my research work… to about 2001 or 2002, when I started teaching that was back then at the University of Munich, about this early stage in entrepreneurship. And I had entrepreneurs in front of me who always struggled to figure out, not doing the prototypes, etc. They struggled to figure out for whom to do the prototypes, what is a good market to play in. And drive it in multiple ways number one to understand which market domains are out there for them, and which they could address in seconds and which one is might or may not be such a good one. And this is a very interesting process that relies a lot on creativity etc. And we'll probably talk about this later on. But there was a paper by a very famous entrepreneurship researcher called Scott Shane. He studied 3D printing from MIT, how it was commercialized - as shown very nicely in his paper - that this technology, this innovation was commercialized by a couple of different people. But all of them basically applied it to the industrial domain, they knew best. Which basically meant, well, there were some people who applied it, maybe to print architectural models, others applied it to dentistry, etc. What was quite interesting for me was, the question while all of these people identified at least one opportunity, but there were some that were extremely valuable opportunities, some that were not valuable at all. So, in that sense, what I asked (in) my research was, you know, could an entrepreneur who sees more opportunities actually benefit from this choice that that he or she would generate? And this is a question that when you look at it, it's a very fundamental nature to entrepreneurship, because the market you choose shapes, not only the profit potential, the value creation potential, but it chooses, it also shapes the identity, in a way, of the company. So in that sense, I got intrigued by this question. I collected some data, then had the pleasure of having a research day at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, when I met Ian MacMillan, one of the very famous entrepreneurship scholars. It turned out that he grappled with the similar ideas that I had grappled with and I had data to investigate to analyze about these early stages in the entrepreneurial process. And we sat together, discussed it, and we have been working on this topic, as scholars ever since the first few papers came out, then end of 2008. This was a very rewarding journey that took a couple of years, then Sharon, my co-author joined the team, where she did her PhD on the topic, collecting data mainly in Israel. And after she was finished, you know, there were now more than a handful of papers. There were other authors who had started studying this topic, knowing this from the research side, but on the other hand, also seeing that there's a lot of interest by startups, but also then from large companies and understanding this early stage process better. And then Sharon and I said, ‘Okay, let's write a book.' ‘Let's solidify this; let's make sure that others can understand it and get it get access to the information because we cannot answer so many phone calls or write so many emails, always explaining the same thing.' So, in that sense, a book is a convenient tool to multiply yourself. And that's how it (the book) came about. But it happened over 15 years of research that then culminated in an effort to write a book. We initially thought it was three months' effort to write a book, it took us two years. Ula:  09:09 Oh, wow! So, 15 years of effort, of research and it took you about two years to now put together the outcome from the research. Marc Gruber:  09:19 Yeah, we thought you know, we've done the research so we should be able to write it down easily… develop a tool, a business framework around it. But that was the hard part, to write something where know the depth, where know it from the research side, you have seen thousands of cases, and then being true to yourself as a researcher and say, hey, it should be simple but not simplistic. And this is a fine line to walk for any author. Because the tool will be applied when it's simple (and) easy to use, but it also will only be applied if it delivers real value. Everyone can dumb down any question as much as one wants but then it's not useful anymore. Finding that fine line between having a simple tool but that is still useful, valuable. So, it took some time to iterate, develop different visuals, develop different explanations. After all, it I think it turned out nicely. It was just a journey that is common to anyone developing a prototype. So, in that sense, what we did there with the tool is nothing less, nothing more than developing another prototype. If you want to do it, well, it's not like a simple task. Ula:  10:22 I have read the book, it's so easy to read, very simple to understand, but not simplistic, as you've said. Why… it's quite easy to miss the amount of work it takes to make things easy and accessible. Marc Gruber:  10:36 After the fact it always looks (like) it's simple. That's exactly the reaction we want to have; that's what a framework needs to do. It needs to boil down… guide you to the main issues, help you ask the right questions and give you good answers. Great admiration for everything Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur did with the Business Model Canvas book, because that's a fantastic book to really enjoy. Ula:  10:58 I have read that, yes. Could you tell us a bit more about the Market Opportunity Navigator? Because that seems to be the centerpiece of the book Where to Play. Marc Gruber:  11:09 So, the book is called Where to Play as you say. It addresses this very fundamental question, ‘Which market domain should I enter?' This is a question, if you break it down analytically, you can say, ‘Hey I first want to understand (the) playground, you know, my opportunity landscape. It's not straightforward to figure this out. Some people might think oh, I can only play in one domain but I am yet to meet an entrepreneur who actually is trapped in one domain only. Normally entrepreneurs can play in multiple domains using their competencies. Let me give you a simple example. It's a drone company out of Lausanne (Switzerland), Flyability - that Steve Blank also featured in his blog post about the book. This drone company that has created a drone in a cage, of course for such a company, they were inspired by market needs in the nuclear energy domain, but then realized there might be better market domains out there. And they did it early enough to avoid any costly pivots. Oftentimes, companies realize that only after a couple of months, maybe even years that the market domain that they had originally identified is not as performant as it could or should be. Then they need to pivot. We wondered - with our practical work with startups, with innovators and established firms - how to make this process a bit more philosophical. This doesn't mean you have a crystal ball and exactly know what the future will bring; this is not at all the idea. Quite to the contrary, in innovation, we all know that you cannot predict the future. But what is particular is that you can also already in advance, try to understand some basic features of your markets. You know, some are highly congested, some are not, some are growth markets, some are shrinking markets, etc., etc. So, there are parameters where you can say, ‘I can make an informed choice.' Second, what you can do by having this from a bird's eye view is to bake agility into the DNA of your staff. Just think about the brand name you're gonna choose. If you have a company that is doing drones, you know, this company in Lausanne that I was talking about called itself Flyability.  With this name, you basically can enter any type of domain. They could also have called themselves Drones for the Inspection of Nuclear Energy Plants. This would lock them in even more into this domain and would make a pivot even harder if it should become necessary. So, in short, what we want to do with the method is to provide you with a tool to figure out what are your potential domains out there, your opportunities. And second, provide a tool that allows you to become a more agile star. And both together I think, are a winning combination that allows you to navigate this difficult and uncertain process of startup creation, of early stage innovation. Ula:  13:47 Thanks a lot Marc for that. In your book, you summarized the Market Opportunity Navigator framework as consisting of three steps. Could you let the audience know what these three steps are please? Marc Gruber:  14:02 With pleasure! The Market Opportunity Navigator has a main dashboard which depicts the three steps. The first step is the opportunity bag, you know, it's a little bag where you collect all the opportunities that you identified. The second step consists of a matrix that allows you to evaluate the attractiveness matrix. And the third step is to enter a focus, could we say, hey, that's where I focus and these could be good plan B's, in case my plan A doesn't work out or a good growth option in case my plan A works out. These three steps are depicted on the main navigator board, but behind each step is a worksheet that helps you to walk through these questions and address the main question. So, the first worksheet is dedicated towards helping you understand the different playgrounds you have, you know, the different opportunities that exist for you. It creates, therefore, the opportunity landscape. The underlying idea is that you delink your existing competencies from a concrete application. You know, also in the case of this drone company, they should think about the drones, the capabilities, the competencies they have in their own right without really linking it to any domain. And then have a creative brainstorming session internally and externally with external people to understand what is really the scope of my activities. And this is the first worksheet that helps you to figure out the opportunity landscape. The second worksheet is a worksheet that helps you to evaluate these options that you identified. This is a worksheet that builds on 50 years of venture capital research. Most of your listeners will probably be familiar with the venture capital domain and know that one of the core tasks of a venture capitalist is to understand the prospect of an early stage venture. Venture capitalists have developed a rich set of tools basically to analyze the attractiveness of potential ventures that are presented to them. And we drew on 50 years of research in this domain, and this was really hard work to bring them together into factors that shape the attractiveness, and factors that shape the challenge level in ranking an opportunity, which will combine to provide you with an assessment of how good or not so good these opportunities are. Again, under uncertainty which means while you'll need to maybe adjust your information over time etc. (because these are six factors in total), it had to give entrepreneurs and innovators a more complete view of the factors that matter. Because you might have realized that yourself when you talk to the entrepreneurs, they always excited about the opportunities they're pursuing. Usually they focus on one dimension, you know, think about market size, ‘Wow, that's a big market - that's great!' … or competitive advantage, ‘Hey, we are ahead of the competition. That's great!' But normally what they don't have (is) a pluralistic view of all the key challenges that could hinder the development - time to first revenue, which is a key metric, as entrepreneurship has shown and how long it takes to make these sales, how difficult it is to make the sales, how big (the sales are), and so on. So, you have a couple of metrics that in combination are giving you a more rounded picture of how good or not so good the opportunity is. And if you do this, not only for one opportunity, but for multiple ones, you will quickly realize that not all opportunities are alike. You know, some are high growth, some are low growth, some are highly congested, some are not so congested. With some you have a high margin, with some you have a low margin. And in combination, you have the matrix, which is then the second step in the (Market Opportunity) Navigator that allows you to assess each opportunity, but also the portfolio that you have. The third step is then building on this one, where you can say, ‘Now that I've seen multiple opportunities, (I) have a portfolio in my hands, what should I actually do?'  And there, the tool is non-prescriptive, you choose what you want to do, you know, we have in the matrix, the gold mines - low challenge level, high potential; we have moonshots which have a high potential, high challenge, we have the questionables - which have high challenge but low potential; and the quick wins - which have low potential, but also have low challenge level. So, you might want to say, ‘I'll start with the gold mine' or you might want to say, ‘I feel I am the next Elon Musk, I want to change stuff with a moonshot.' Others might say, ‘You know, I'll start with a quick win and use this to develop another opportunity; I'll earn money quickly but then I'll use the proceeds to do something bigger.' And still others might say, ‘Hey, I love this other domain so much. It's a questionable (domain) but, there's another dimension of pleasure that I get out of this.' So we're not prescriptive, but what we say is, ‘Look, you pick your favorite opportunity', but what we advise you to do is to say, ‘Hey, there might be a second opportunity, a third one that is closely related, so that you have growth options that you can efficiently exploit over time.' Or you have - if the first opportunity doesn't work out - you have a good plan B. That's actually quite an interesting concept. It's not something where you invest a lot of time, but in case things go sour, don't materialize, with your first choice… you know, you want to have a pivot that is not as painful as it could be. If you have to pivot, you want to have one that doesn't consume all your energy, your resources, your time or financial resources. Pivoting could be easier, if you have good foresight. Ula:  19:08 I like the illustration in your book, that's around having a backup plan that would help with a seamless pivot where required when you showed two mountains, and there was a bridge. It's kind of you know, depicted that when you have all these details, and you know what your backup plan is, you also would be working consciously to make sure the infrastructure is there, and you are not starting from ground zero again, if you need to pivot. Marc Gruber:  19:35 You can make it more flexible. Look at this drone example I gave you two minutes ago. This is something where you can say, ‘I know that the drone can be applied to inspecting bridges as much as it can be applied to inspecting silos, farm equipment, etc.' What you do is to build a drone that is going to be more flexibly adjusted. And this is like picking a great brand name that you can choose to use for these different domains. As much as that takes initially with a little bit of foresight, some agility into your venture that can make a big difference. When we talk to venture capitalists, they said, ‘Okay, this is a great tool, we wish every startup would come up with a Market Opportunity Navigator to (show) us, because it can clearly tell us that they have figured out what an attractive market is.' ‘They know what they do, they know what they don't want to do. They know what their plan B could be and they know that they are not a one trick pony that can only grow in this domain, but can grow in other domains.' This is creating an exciting value creation journey for the startup but also for the venture capitalists. Also, when you think about it, the little force that you can give to the entrepreneurial venture that is affordable under conditions of uncertainty, this little foresight that can get you a long way. Ula:  20:43 It could be the difference between success or massive failure really. Marc Gruber:  20:48 Absolutely, you know, I'm still yet to meet the first startup that really said, ‘I enjoyed pivoting.'   This is often a task that creates not only financial inefficiencies, but a lot of worry in the team. You know, one of the founders firmly believed in a domain and that turns out to be not so great and the need for (a) pivot arises. It's also loss of status maybe within the team; there are quarrels, there are fights, there are redirections. This is not a pleasant period and if you can make this at least smoother by baking this agility as I called it into the DNA of your venture, a lot is gained. And if you maybe can avoid, like on average, not every startup, but on average, a significant number of startup can avoid pivoting then I think the process is also one where that is more rewarding. Ula:  21:38 You have explained the first two steps: searching broadly assessing deeply. And this all leads to the Agile Focus Dartboard. Can you tell us a bit more about that? Marc Gruber:  21:52 Yeah. So, you can picture in your head a dartboard actually with three layers… You have the focal element - that's the opportunity to focus on. And we are big supporters of the idea that you should focus on an opportunity, especially in your startup. When you have three, four people, it's nonsense that you chase too many balloons; you focus on one, but you keep others open as a secondary. Say, ‘Hey, I passively observe, I read newspaper reports maybe once in a while. So, I have a passive knowledge about these markets and keep myself current, because I realise that these might be interesting, additional options for me.' And then we have the third (outer) ring, which we call the storage where you say, ‘Look, there are some opportunities we studied, and they don't work out for us. So, we put these ideas away.' And this is actually more helpful than one might initially think. Because when I talk to entrepreneurs about this third step, they say, ‘Hey, look, this putting away is as valuable for us as the focus, because it helps you to keep what you might want to call mental hygiene. You have so many things constantly to address, to worry about in your venture, (so) if you can put something away, that's actually a relief. And that's why this third ring is actually much helpful to entrepreneurs.  With the tools, you come from something unstructured, creative where you have a lot of opportunities, lots of options to something where you have evaluated them to a third step where you say, ‘Hey, that's where I should focus.' And that's then the focal point where, and I'm sure we talk about other tools later on, like a business model canvas, customer development, customer discovery, minimum viable product. We would say, ‘Hey let's learn with additional tools, whether this market domain that I selected is actually a good one.' So big picture of the tool is providing you with some kind of meta learning. You say, ‘Okay, that's what my company could potentially do.' I create (enable) agility. Now, let's learn about the ‘how to play' - the business model that works in your domain; the ideal prototype that you could develop for your target customers. So, the ‘where to play' and the ‘how to play' then form, the yin and the yang, if you want to call it that way. Ula:  23:57 You've nicely segued into the next question I have, which is about other business tools that the Market Opportunity Navigator can be used with? Can you go into more details on this, please? Marc Gruber:  24:10 So, when we designed the tool, we actually were careful in saying, ‘Hey, we know that there is a unique aspect to it that none of the other tools addresses. Let's design it in a way that's plug and play with the existing tools - so, it's non redundant. And actually, when we discussed with Steve Blank, he loved the idea so much that he'd said, ‘Okay, I'm gonna write a blog post about it, and integrate your (Market Opportunity Navigator) tool into my Lean toolset because it's missing some additional valuable learning that is critical for entrepreneurs and innovators.' So, it's non redundant with the other tools, but it forms a more complete tool, and therefore delivers value for the question but delivers that additional value to the other tools and vice versa. There's a nice blog post by Steve Blank called Stop Playing Target Market Roulette; a New Addition to the Lean Toolset. Ula:  24:56 Yes, I've read that. Marc Gruber:  24:57 Wonderful blog post, and it teaches this Flyability drone example, if you want to look at it. Ula:  25:02 We'll put it in the show notes. Yeah. Marc Gruber:  25:04 And there he explained actually how the tools work together. If you think big picture, you can say, well, the market opportunity navigator helps you to understand where to play, what is a good starting position for your venture. And then you would say, ‘Hey, for this starting position, for this domain, I now try to develop a business model that is appealing. And in order to develop a good business model, I need to figure out product-market fit.' So, I do customer discovery, I do a minimum viable product - we all know Osterwalder/ Pigneur's Business Model Canvas, you know. Steve Blank's tools about minimum viable product, customer discovery... Ula: 25:37 The Lean Startup… Marc Gruber: 25:39 …Exactly! The Lean method that is then extended and say okay, there's another layer to the lean that method. That's how he features it in the blog. So, what you have is basically, a nice suite of business tools that work nicely in conjunction. Each one adds value to the other one. And that's why I like to use them in my own classroom and my work with startups or with large enterprises. I like to apply them as a suite of tools because then people understand the logic behind each of them, but also get much more utility out of them if they combine them. Ula:  26:12 Hmm. So, it sounds like you know, the Market Opportunity Navigator gives you a view at a higher level, a macro level. And then once you've gotten those details and you've narrowed down on where to play, you can now drill down into you know, developing the business model canvas and testing your hypothesis using the Lean Startup method. Marc Gruber:  26:34 If you look at the Lean Startup tools, Business Model Canvas, as well… they don't really tell you where to play, you know, they assume that you have a market. Also, if you look at design thinking, you know, it's an important method nowadays and (needed) in the toolbox of any innovation manager, but it assumes you have a target market that is useful to investigate, to spend time before doing design thinking. But the question is, might there be a better target market out there where it's even more valuable to apply design thinking that is not addressed. Also, the Market Opportunity Navigator helps to address the question therefore, makes the design thinking method for that business model canvas all the other tools we have talked about, more valuable because it's more promising to do (use) them. Ula:  27:18 Do you so far, the focus of the conversation has been on how this market opportunity navigator framework is useful for startups? Can large organizations get some use out of it as well, if so, how? Marc Gruber:  27:33 That's a very good question. The book is written mainly from the perspective of startups. If you apply it to established companies, you know, I've done that multiple times now in workshops, this can be applied extremely smoothly. Established companies typically use the other tools. For the established companies, the where to play question is extremely important nowadays, because you know, you have all the new technologies that provide new competencies. And with the tool… I'll give you a very concrete example. You know, an established watchmaker can understand that when by putting sensors into the competence set, they could actually become a medical device company. Because they say, oh, we now have a watch that can measure your blood pressure, that can measure maybe your sugar level for diabetes, whatever it is, you know, and that's a where to play question. And technology enables so many new uses; AI, put AI into your established products, and you can become a different animal as a company. When you look closely what the very successful Silicon Valley companies are doing, they are not bound by their initial turf. A prime example is Uber. Uber moves wherever it can grow. Uber moves, wherever it can grow based on competencies, you know, and acquires new ones on the way to make the opportunity space even larger. I think we are living in an exciting time because technology enables so much that you can become as a company, a very different animal, that doesn't mean that you have to lose your first initial market domain. But it means you play in additional markets. And Rita McGrath, my colleague from Columbia Business School, she's very nicely depicted this in her book, The End of Competitive Advantage, where she says, look, we used to live in a world dominated by industry, we're actually nowadays living in competing arenas. That means, you know, wherever firms move, wherever they can grow, their measure of success is the share of the potential opportunity space. But that's a fluffy concept. What is an opportunity space? What's the share, you can get out of this one? That's a very pertinent question. And the virtual playbook gives you basically, the tool that helps you to understand what's your opportunity space, this doesn't fall out of heaven for the companies. If Apple moves into car manufacturing, this is an entrepreneurial step where they say, ‘okay, that's an opportunity that we identified'. Among many opportunities that they identified that this is one that they've deemed worthwhile to get into. And then there's managerial questions about how to exploit this opportunity to hire away people from Daimler, partner up with Fiat… whatever, you know, those steps are to explore this opportunity. But initially, there's the where to play question for Apple, for Uber, for Google, for any type of company, out there, and you can close your eyes to that and say, hey, we are only in our home turf, but then others might have set their sights on your home turf. Now think about what happened to the cellphone manufacturers, you know, they were attacked, they didn't die, because the second one, Ericsson took over Motorola and became bigger than Nokia. Now, it was the computer manufacturers who said, hey, we can play in the cellphone domain. And see, and that's where this arena concept is extremely pertinent. And therefore, tools that help you to understand what your competitive arena is - where to play - become important. That's where the book becomes important. What usually larger or more resource rich firms can do is to not only exploit one opportunity, but they can do multiple ones. So, the third step is one where they can focus on a handful, maybe a dozen opportunities in parallel, create an interesting pipeline. But even then, when I talk to the large companies, they don't want to waste money. They want to understand where they could play and what could be a good plan B if my first option doesn't work out. Ula:  31:10 They also want to be lean and agile. Marc Gruber:  31:13 If you can achieve a higher innovation outcome … strong innovation outcome, with less effort, with less resource consumption, of course, that's a winning formula. Ula:  31:25 Hmm. That's true. Do you then have any other books in the pipeline, will there be a sequel to Where to Play? Marc Gruber:  31:34 At the moment is no sequel plan because the book has been out for two years. When you look at how long it takes until books are known to people, understand and apply them… It takes some time until a tool actually is diffusing into the market. And a good example is Steve Blank's books. They were extremely successful, but it also didn't come from Sunday to Monday. But it took some time until people heard about them, saw them, saw the usefulness, they create a following. And then the same happened with Osterwalder and Pigneur's initial book, which was the Business Model Generation book, which took several years until it hit mainstream. That's why the Where to Play is a book, which was launched, people adopted it, it got translated into multiple languages, Steve Blank featured it as a part of the Lean Startup toolset in May last year. So, I think the journey is still on the early side. And so, I prefer setting my sights on helping others to apply it, understand its value, because I firmly believe in the value and how it can help people become more successful entrepreneurs and innovators. Maybe, at some point I'd say it's time for a second one. But you know, not yet, not quite yet. Ula:  32:42 No problem at all! Right!! So, are you a reader? Would you say you like reading? Marc Gruber:  32:47 I love reading. I like reading and I actually can read quite quickly - that's the benefit. But some of the stuff you don't want to read quickly and that's the annoying part, because then you don't have the time to read it slowly. Ula:  32:57 What would you say, are your two favorite books and why? Marc Gruber:  33:02 There is a book from 1959 from Edith Penrose. She's one of the eminent academic scholars. She has written a book called The Theory of the Growth of the Firm. This is an extremely insightful book in the sense that many of the things we're discussing nowadays are actually foreshadowed by her, half a century earlier. And it's a very nicely written book, it basically says, ‘Look, if you want to understand the growth of firms, you just have to look at the imaginative power of its C-suite and that is a function of their education and experience in print.' And it's just one element of the book, which makes it exciting because it foreshadows a lot of the diversification literature we see; the growth literature that we see nowadays. And it has very powerful patterns of explanation that help you to understand why some firms are growing very strongly, while other firms might be very constrained in how they think about what they could do. Ultimately brings it down to a very intriguing level of understanding because it connects the cognitive element to the resource base of a company. So, I recommend that definitely to everyone. Another one that I like a lot is The Entrepreneurial Mindset by Rita McGrath and Ian MacMillan. This came out in 2000. And it's one of those books that combines a lot of entrepreneur insights. It's based on a couple of HBR (Harvard Business Review) papers that MacMillan and McGrath had authored in the late 80s and throughout the 90s. They put them all together in this book with a lot of added new content, and a lot of new theorization, examples, etc. So it's one of those books, you read it and say that was a milestone, too, when you read the book by Steve Blank and by Alex Osterwalder, from Eric Ries, the more recent one, but you begin to understand the intellectual roots that each and every book has the heritage of the thoughts, how the fields developed, how we nowadays think about stuff, but also where it has its roots maybe 20, 30 years ago, or in Penrose's case, more than half a century ago. Ula:  35:04 It is interesting, because you find out that there are connections and no field kind of suddenly springs up on its own, there are connections. Marc Gruber:  35:13 Yeah, that's it. If someone has a bit of reading time over the next few weeks, months, over the summer on the beach - this is definitely a set of books that you can take with you and you understand management and entrepreneurship, innovation management, in their very fundamental and intriguing manner. Ula:  35:31 I already have some of the books in my library, I now have some recommendations for new ones. So that's much appreciated. So, given how much you've accomplished over the years, what would be your advice for someone who is starting up and who might aspire to walk the path that you're on currently? Marc Gruber:  35:53 For me, it was important for my own career as a professor to understand where to play. In the sense that I always had more paper opportunities - articles or research opportunities than I could possibly do. So, I basically had my own portfolio of opportunities, and I had to discriminate where I thought this might be a better research question. This might be a more intriguing question than another one. So, I think I applied basically what I early on, you know, in my research what I later on said in the playbook. That's number one. Number two, you can always push harder. If you think your paper is nice, you can make it even nicer. That's like 110% level; you push yourself and try to understand what your limits are. I think that's an interesting aspect to discover within yourself and not to be too satisfied too early. Which makes you grow, basically a recipe for growth, because you say, ‘I push harder, I tried to learn more, I tried to write it even better' and then you push yourself over your own limits. And that's the satisfying part that leads to what I've just said earlier, when you know, I was talking about art and the implications for art. A good artist doesn't give up early, a good artist pushes himself to understand the new frontier. And I think as scientists, we are pushing the frontiers and, you know, in that sense, giving up too early is not a good recipe. You always can do better, because that's the way you learn. And that brings me to my third advice as to being a professor, being an academic. You get paid for pushing the frontier, and then you get even paid for talking about how you push the frontier.  So, it's never boring, you know, because you try to push the frontier. It's a wonderful experience to learn more and to say, ‘Okay, I understood something that maybe other people have not yet understood', and or at least from this perspective, have understood, and then you talk about it, and you get feedback. It's a process that keeps you young as well. Ula:  37:46 It's important to enjoy the process as well, don't you think? Marc Gruber:  37:50 Yeah, but don't tell it to my employer because he is paying me for doing this job you know. Ula:  37:56 I wouldn't. Okay, right. So how can the audience reach you Marc? Marc Gruber:  36:27 The audience can email me at marc.gruber@epfl.ch. We have an interesting website that you might want to check out, it's called wheretoplay.co, www.wheretoplay.co. There, you can register for our newsletter. So, we every other month, we update the latest news, latest slides that you can download all this stuff for free. You can get webinars about the method. You can, if you're a trainer, a coach or consultant, you can get the material there for free to apply it in your activities. So, worksheets are in the open domain download. We have basic slides that you can use for teaching the method, for doing your consulting. All of that up on the website, check it out, wheretoplay.co. You just have to register and then all this material is available to you. Ula: 38:50 Oh wow. All for free?   Marc Gruber:  38:52 All for free Ula:  38:53 Wow, that's impressive Marc Gruber:  38:56 You know, we're currently also working on an app - so that what I described as a process becomes more of a very playful exercise. Ula:  39:01 That's great. Are you on social media? Marc Gruber:  39:04 All on the usual suspects except for Instagram. Marc B Gruber on Twitter, it's on LinkedIn, on Facebook - you find me with my name. That's about it, you know? Ula:  39:14 Is there anything else you want, the audience to check out, or do? Marc Gruber:  39:19 You know, if people (would) send us emails about how useful it was? If you have the chance to apply (these concepts) please do and let us know your experiences. It's so rewarding for Sharon and myself to just listen to your stories, how it helped you, etc. You know, we get many stories of entrepreneurs saying ‘Oh, we wish would have applied it when we were young…'  ‘…We could have avoided some mistakes', you know. Then they still applied and they are a bit progressed in their careers and that's exciting to hear as well. Please share your stories, email us, leave them on the website. We want to hear from you. Ula:  39:55 Great! Well, thank you so much for your time, Marc. It's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you. Marc Gruber:  40:02 It's my pleasure entirely. Thank you very much, Ula.

Vivian ¿Por qué te lo has dejado para el final? ¿No se comienza con el plan? En realidad todo este tiempo he estado acompañándote a encontrar las fichas de tu rompecabezas y cada episodio ha sido una, en especial desde el episodio 56 en cuanto a negocios. Hoy avanzaremos ya en la construcción del plan completo, la foto entera o el rompecabezas que será tu sistema. Quédate conmigo aquí porque te tengo un desafío para avanzar en tu estrategia de negocios. Si lo que quieres es construir tu proyecto en 10 PASOS, esta es tu guía

Episode Summary: In this episode Dr Sharon Tal and I discuss how the book she co-authored with Prof Marc Gruber, ‘Where to Play' complements the Lean Start Up movement and Design Thinking. She also explains how the Market Opportunity Navigator could benefit large organisations as well as start-ups.   Bio: Dr. Tal helps entrepreneurs and managers identify, evaluate and prioritize market opportunities for their business. Together with Prof Marc Gruber she wrote the book ‘Where to Play' to help companies choose a promising strategic focus and move forward with confidence. Dr. Tal is the co-founder and former Executive Director of the Entrepreneurship Center at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, and a Senior Lecturer in Marketing and Entrepreneurship. She runs courses and workshops in accelerators and universities around the world, and serves as a mentor in many organizations that aim to help budding entrepreneurs. Sharon has vast experience in marketing, as she served as a marketing manager for firms in several industries, as well as extensive experience in strategic consulting. Her PhD research looked at market entry decisions of hundreds of startups and its consequences on firm performance and flexibility. Website/ social media: Where to Play website: https://wheretoplay.co/ Sharon's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharon-tal-itzkovitch-a390414a/ Where to Play LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wheretoplay/ Twitter: @WhereToPlayCo   Books mentioned in this episode: [NOTE: We currently bear all costs for organising, producing and hosting the podcast series. To help us offset costs, would you consider purchasing the mentioned books via our Amazon affiliate links below? Doing this could give us a commission from Amazon at no extra cost to you. Thank you!] Where to Play: 3 Steps to Discovering Your Most Valuable Market Opportunities by Marc Gruber and Sharon Tal End of Competitive Advantage: How to Keep Your Strategy Moving as Fast as Your Business by Rita Gunther McGrath Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen by Rita Gunther McGrath The Corporate Startup: How Established Companies Can Develop Successful Innovation Ecosystems by Tendai Viki, Dan Toma & Esther Gons Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products That Win by Steve Blank The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers by Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want by Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur Building a Story Brand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen by Donald Miller   Articles: Steve Blank's Blog on Where to Play https://steveblank.com/2019/05/07/how-to-stop-playing-target-market-roulette-a-new-addition-to-the-lean-toolset/ Steve Blank's 2nd blog on Where to Play: https://steveblank.com/2020/06/23/winners-rising-out-of-the-crisis-where-to-find-new-markets-and-customers/   Interview Transcript: Ula Ojiaku:  01:16 So, we have with us today, Sharon Ta1, who is the co-author of the book Where to Play. Sharon, thank you so much for making the time to be our guest on this podcast. Sharon Tal:  01:28 My pleasure - hi, Ula! Ula Ojiaku:  01:30 Hi! So, let's start! I did a bit of research, you know, just to find out a bit more about you before this conversation and I Googled (the name) Sharon Tal - it seems like it's a very popular name for famous people. So, I saw an actress who is famous and a notable TV producer who used to be with Amazon… What do you think about that? Sharon Tal:  01:53 Actually, that's a unique question Ula - original one. So it's true - Sharon is a very popular Israeli name. I come from Israel, and it's a very popular Israel name, especially for women around my age. The meaning of Sharon is actually a geographical area in Israel. And I've never been the only Sharon in class, university, work, wherever. And of course, there are many others with even the same surname. So, I'm used to some of these confusions by now. Ula Ojiaku:  02:26 Okay, I love the name. And I remember seeing the reference to it for the first time in the Bible, you know - the Rose of Sharon. It has a significant meaning to me as well. Sharon Tal: 02:36 Thank you. Ula Ojiaku:  02:38 You are a very accomplished person, having written the book, the significant work you did with your PhD that culminated in the co-authoring of the book, Where to Play with Professor Marc Gruber. And yet in my limited interaction with you, you come across as a very personable, down to earth person, very easy to communicate with.  Can you tell us a bit about your journey so far? How did you get to where you are currently? Sharon Tal:  03:05 Well, first of all, thank you for the warm words. And always nice to hear that other think you are well-accomplished. I started my journey as a Marketing Manager. But at some point, I wanted to go back to study masters thesis in Strategic Management. And I went back to where I did my first degree, which is the Technion Israel Institute of Technology, and I kind of fell in love with the academic field and a great place to stay, especially when you have kids at home. So, after I finished my masters thesis,  I stayed in the university and I co-founded the Entrepreneurship Center there. So, then I was managing the Entrepreneurship Center at the Technion and that's where I got to learn so much about the entrepreneurial journey and meet and consult with hundreds of early-stage startups and entrepreneurs - especially technology entrepreneurs. And during that time, I noticed that there is a challenge that is very common to many of them and that was figuring out which market to pursue with their innovative idea. And given that I was coming from a marketing background, I wanted to help them find a structure for this decision, and we couldn't find a good tool. So eventually, I decided to do my PhD on this topic. And we looked at hundreds of early stage startups and how they managed this trade off, this question of where to focus, and how to focus properly. I'm telling you all this because it's just a step-by-step process in my career that at the end led me to have this deep know-how and expertise in figuring out how to focus properly for and find the best market. So, given all this academic and practical understanding, at the end, we decided to write this book and develop this methodology, the market opportunity navigator to bring this know-how, which is (the) theoretical and practical, together to the practitioners. At the end, that's my career story and today, I work mainly when training this methodology, either in academic institutes or early stage entrepreneurs' programs, for budding entrepreneurs, and also larger organizations and innovation managers. Ula Ojiaku:  05:25 Okay, so that means you are open to like consulting with either budding entrepreneurs or large or small organizations. Sharon Tal:  05:34 Correct. Only thing I want to refine here is it's not exactly consulting. As far as I said, it's more of a facilitation, so I facilitate the process with them. The difference is, as a consultant -  and I used to work as a consultant in the past - you don't only ask the questions, you also bring the answers. When you facilitate a process, you help the team ask the right questions, but they bring the answers to the table, and then you'll help them digest and make the right decisions out of that. So, that's what I mainly do today I think, facilitation rather than consulting. Ula Ojiaku:  06:13 I like the way you've differentiated the term, ‘consultants' and you've emphasized that you're more of a facilitator. That gives me the impression that it's more about you drawing out the information or the answers that they already know that's within them - because they know their context better than you ever could - having been there. But you are helping them to draw out the answers and helping them to use the tool adequately in their context. Sharon Tal:  06:41 Correct. Ula Ojiaku:  06:42 Ok, thanks for the clarification Sharon. What would you consider as the main challenge you've experienced in your career or personally? Sharon Tal:  06:51 Yeah. Okay. So, let me divide this into two. So professionally and personally. From a professional perspective, I think the most challenging part was to bridge the gap between academia and the practical world. In a way, I was blessed to have prior experience in both. And when we started to write the book, we also thought it's going to be quite easy to find a way to bridge this gap. But it took us much longer than we expected, because it's very challenging to find the middle ground between being thorough enough and simple enough. And that's the challenge of combining theories, and bringing them to - in a very simple, appealing way - to practitioners. So, from a professional perspective, I think that's the main challenge. From personal perspective. But that's not only me, I'm sure that many women in general, I think the main challenge always has been to balance life and career, especially having three kids at home and finding the way to be both a good professional and a good mother and wife. So that's always the thing for me. And almost every decision that I've made in my career was somehow made having this challenge in mind. Ula Ojiaku:  08:15 I totally empathize. I mean, you're a little bit ahead of me, because I have a nine-year-old and a seven-year-old and… Sharon Tal: 08:23 They will grow. Ula Ojiaku:  08:25 They will and they are, I mean, things are much better than when they were in diapers, certainly. But I've found myself having to make decisions professionally, that take into consideration how it's going to affect them, especially at their age. Yes, so I've made sacrifices and compromises and I'll do it all over again. Sharon Tal:  08:48 So, would I. So, would I, so I am proud of my sacrifices. I think they were right. So, I would do it all over again. Ula Ojiaku:  08:56 They're not always young, like you said, and that gives me hope - they'll grow up and give us freer times. Now moving on to… so moving on to your book, Where to Play. I've already had a very good chat with your co-author, Professor Marc Gruber. And he gave us an overview of the work you'd done and what the market opportunity navigator is all about. For the audience members who are yet to listen to this and just as a recap, can you give us a recap of what this is (about) please? Sharon Tal:  09:26 Sure, so the book Where to Play presents a structured methodology or framework if you want that is called the market opportunity navigator. This process helps entrepreneurs and business managers to find or discover the best market opportunities for their innovation. Think about any almost any technological innovation or idea that you have or even existing business line of company, they can always apply it to create different offerings or address the needs of different types of customers. So, the process helps you with three steps. First, it's about identifying; discovering different market opportunities for this innovation. What type of applications, I can stem from your core abilities, and who may need it - in any combination of application and customer is a market opportunity for your company? The second step is the evaluation step. So, you need to be able to comprehensively assess the attractiveness of these different directions, or different opportunities, either if you're an early stage startup, or if you're looking for the growth engines for your venture for your company. So, the second step helps you to systematically evaluate the potential and the challenge of every market opportunity on your plate and compare them visually. And the third step is about prioritizing. How do you compile all this information that I'm learning to set a smart to design a smart strategy for your company, a strategy that can utilize this multiple market opportunities in your favour? So, if you are an early stage startup, you can utilize these multiple opportunities to set your backup and growth options and keep them open for the future. If you're a large organization, you can utilize these multiple opportunities, to design a portfolio of growth options - those that are a little bit more related and more far out from your existing business line - to create this balanced portfolio of growth or growing options. Just to summarize this three-step process, and very structured because every step has a dedicated worksheet to help you go through this decision making. So, it's very easy, in a way very easy to apply either as a sole manager, but also in a team. Probably one of the main benefits is that it creates a shared language or communication tool. You can now walk through this strategic design or strategic process in a very systematic way, involving different people, or employees or stakeholders. Ula Ojiaku:  12:09 Thanks a lot. That's a very good overview. Just tying to that, because you said it could be used by you know, both individuals and small and large enterprises. So, for large organizations, how could the market opportunity navigator benefit large organizations? Sharon Tal:  12:37 Yeah, it's interesting, because, you know, when we started developing this tool, we had startups in mind, and it was actually based on our deep, you know, research for how early stage startups make decisions. But very quickly, we figured out that large organizations also need a structured process to identify their next growth opportunities. And some of them, of course, already apply some processes, but they are not always  comprehensive and some of them are just doing this messy decision-making process with no systematic practices. And that creates a little bit too much emphasis on luck rather than systems. Ula Ojiaku:  13:09 And sometimes, it's really about the most senior person who is just, you know, pushing it (their agenda) or the loudest, right? Sharon Tal:  13:16 Correct. Definitely, right. Definitely, right. So, so I think the very first thing to keep in mind is if you have a structured tool that can involve different types of employees and managers and manager levels. In this process, it's very valuable. Now, the thing that we've found most beneficial for larger corporates when they use the market opportunity navigator is actually the identification phase. So, let me explain why. Many times, managers are bounded within their existing industry lines. And today, we know from different books and different studies, including a very good one by Rita McGrath that industry lines are quickly blurring, and competitive advantage is very temporary. And therefore, organizations need to find and identify opportunities, not necessarily within their existing industries. So, they actually need to learn how to break out from existing industries and think wider. And that's a challenging process. So, the first step of the Market Opportunity Navigator helps you to first characterize your core strengths or core abilities in their own right. And then think how you can combine or recombine them in different ways to create completely different offerings, for completely different market segments or market opportunities. That really helps you to think outside your limited industrial boundaries. And what we see happening many times is, these structured brainstorming sessions are very powerful. You can use them to analyze your core strength and think what else you can do with it. It's like an exercise in cognitive flexibility. But you can also use this to ask yourself, okay, now that I've listed this core strength, what if I had a new one? What if I developed another core element in here? For example, blockchain abilities, whatever, okay, and how would that open up different opportunities for my company? So, it's a semi-structured discovery process, which is very powerful to help companies discover their opportunity arena. So, an arena is a concept again coined by Rita McGrath that said, don't forget your industries, think about your larger opportunity spaces or arenas, and that discovery process is very valuable in this manner for this specific issue. Now, also, I think, larger organizations are looking for ways to bring in entrepreneurial mindsets and entrepreneurial imagination. So, using these tools which were originally tailored for startups and bring(ing) them into their meeting rooms is actually very nice. You can put this thing (the Market Opportunity Navigator template) on a wall, you can use sticky notes, you can run these brainstorming sessions. It's fun, it's enjoyable, it's engaging. And I think large corporates could definitely find the benefit in this approach as well. Now, another thing to keep in mind probably is that once you discover opportunities with this first step of the Navigator, the second one helps you to quickly distinguish or characterize them based on the potential that they bear for your company and the challenge in pursuing them. So, you can very quickly or you can characterize or distinguish between these ideas, and find your goldmine opportunities - those that are higher on potential and relatively low or manageable on challenge. You can also use this to find your quick wins, which are maybe modest on potential but relatively safe. And actually, quick wins have a good benefit in larger organizations because they help make the change. If you start your process with applying some or pursuing some quick wins, you get the buy in of stakeholders' entire management more easily. And you're on your way to a larger change in the future - for your moonshot's opportunities, for example, in the future. So, I think that's maybe another benefit to keep in mind. Ula Ojiaku:  17:48 So, Sharon, can you define what you mean by a moonshot? I mean, goldmine sounds like it's something that would be potentially highly profitable, with medium to minimal effort on the part of the organization. And there is the quick win, you know, the low hanging fruit, which is easy-to-get medium-sized opportunities, but it's easier to implement and get but what would be a moonshot? Sharon Tal:  18:12 So, you're definitely right with your interpretation. The moonshot opportunities are those with a high potential, but also extremely high challenge. Now many breakthrough innovations or if you think about large corporates, breaking beyond their existing business lines, beyond their existing customer segments is challenging, but you want to have those in your portfolio as well. Right? So, that's when we talk about the attractiveness of different opportunities. We categorize them based on these two dimensions: potential and challenge. And moonshot is one of these quadrants, you know, matrix. Ula Ojiaku:  18:47 Okay, you mentioned Rita McGrath's book, were you referring to The Competitive Advantage? Or is there any other book…? Sharon Tal:  18:54 Yeah, so she has actually two books that relates to this topic. One is The End of Competitive Advantage, exactly the one you mentioned, where she talks about the fact that competitive advantage is very temporary these days, and companies must be able to explore new opportunities all the time, and move quickly, or reconfigure their assets quickly to move from one opportunity to the other. And the Market Opportunity Navigator helps you to do just that. How do you leverage your existing abilities and core strengths to completely new opportunities? The other book that was recently published is Seeing Around Corners, where she provides some more guidelines on how to identify when disruption is coming into your industry, and then you need to quickly figure out what to do with that. Ula Ojiaku:  19:52 Okay, okay. That's great. You've beautifully explained why the Market Opportunity Navigator would be beneficial to large organizations as well, even though it was originally put together, synthesized for startups, for entrepreneurs. How does the Market Opportunity Navigator complement the Lean Startup cycle? Sharon Tal:  20:14 Yeah, yes, that's actually a great question. Because when we designed it, we didn't want to (re-)invent, you know, the wheel. We wanted to join the Lean Startup movement. But we felt that the tools of the Lean Startup customer development process, the Business Model Canvas, the Agile development - all of these tools are very good to quickly find your product-market fit within a market domain, or pivot quickly if you find out it's the wrong one. But what they don't tell you is where to actually start digging in, where to actually start your customer development process. And that's where the Market Opportunity Navigator comes in, and there was recently a blog published by Steve Blank, the father of Lean Startup, where he actually talks about the key addition of the Market Opportunity Navigator into the Lean Toolset. The idea is that the Market Opportunity Navigator helps you to figure out where to play, find out this market domains where you can dig in or you can have some businesses. And then the Lean Toolset helps you to zoom in and figure out how to play. And you can very quickly experiment and refine and figure out your business model within the market domain. So, it's the wide lens perspective to help you define the boundaries for your lean experimentation. Now, one thing to keep in mind that at the end of the day, this is a very iterative process, right? You zoom in and zoom out, you can do this wide lens analysis, figure out the domain, zoom in with the lean experimentation, use these great Lean Startup tools, learn and go up and reflect again, on what you've learned with this wider reflection tool, which is the market opportunity navigator. So, definitely complements these great tools in the title, interestingly, the title that Steve Blank gave to this post is ‘Stop Playing Target Market Roulette', so use this systematic process to define the boundaries of your lean experimentation. Ula Ojiaku:  22:26 Steve Blank actually mentioned your book as well, when I interviewed him, he had high praises for it in terms of how it helped with structuring…at least giving startups a targeted view of where to focus on. I also get the sense that the Navigator ties in quite well with Design Thinking, because it's not about being haphazard. It's really about adding some rigor and structure to how you determine where you play. So, can you tell me a bit more about how the Navigator complements Design Thinking? Sharon Tal:  23:01 Sure. So, first Design Thinking has very, some very, you know, common elements with the Lean Startup, especially when we talk about prototyping and experimenting, validating an idea early on in the market. The key issue for me in Design Thinking is the first steps of customer empathy. So, identifying new opportunities, by putting yourself in the shoes of different customer segments. Now, I think this is actually a great methodology to discover new opportunities for your company. And the reason it complements the market opportunity navigator is because the navigators actually don't start with empathy with customer, it starts with what are your core strengths or abilities, and how can you leverage them to create different or to address the needs of different types of customers. So, at the end of the day, to have a good opportunity, it has to have these two ends, it has to have a clear need from the market. But also, you should be able to address these needs with your core strengths and abilities. So, the discovery process can begin with putting yourselves in the shoes of different types of customer like Design Thinking. But it could also begin with figuring out what's your core abilities or technological elements, and how you can reconfigure them differently. At the end, you will need to tie both ends anyway together to have an opportunity. My main way of looking at this is that they are different perspectives for identifying new market opportunities for the company and both are excellent. And then you create this multiple set of opportunities and you move forward to evaluating and prioritizing them. Ula Ojiaku:  24:52 It gives me the impression that you could start using the Design Thinking and putting yourself in the customers shoes, but you could start from evaluating your strengths, and also understanding what the customer needs. And then finding that, you know, that happy place where what you have, can adequately meet customer's needs or demands. Sharon Tal:  25:12 Exactly. And now, this is a process that it's a discovery process, and it takes time to find and the great thing is, by having multiple opportunities or a large set of opportunities is a real asset for your company. Because at the end, it will help you to find those most promising fertile grounds. So, you can definitely use both methodologies to bring in as many ideas as possible and then start validating them, be able to make sure that you have some good options on your table. Ula Ojiaku:  25:48 So how would you balance this though, because you could go on analyzing, how do you prevent yourself from going into analysis paralysis versus acting and knowing when you've done enough? Sharon Tal:  25:56 Yeah, good, good question. Okay, so I think the first thing I would say I would recommend is, again, is to have a structured process - adopt a structured process. Understand, how do you plan to actually bring the data or the evidence in to make a choice, but you also need to understand that even if you have a systematic process, it doesn't give you a crystal ball to know the future. So, you also need to learn to live with uncertainty because the business world is unpredictable. Innovation is unpredictable. So, my suggestion would be, use a systematic evaluation process, clearly define your criteria and in line with the Lean Startup, start with your assumptions and prepare a clear action plan how you're going to bring evidence to support these assumptions. And at some point, just compile all the data that you have, and make a decision. And one thing that we have learned is that, it's often difficult to compiled all the data that you have to have to create a clear pattern out of this. So, you send your employees, you send your teams to gather information, to talk with potential customers, to do market research on the competitors on different landscapes of opportunities. But how do you then compile all these bits and bytes of information into one clear image or pattern? That's I think, one of the challenges where the market opportunity navigator comes in handy, because it helps you to first be very systematic about the consideration, the criteria, and also consolidate these different factors into one simple image that we call the Attractiveness Map. Ula Ojiaku:  27:53 It kind of brings to mind Alex Osterwalder book on Value Proposition Design and Testing Business Ideas So, there are concepts that I believe that could also help with a structured approach to processing the data collected to help with decision making. What's your view on that? Sharon Tal:  28:11 Oh, yeah, you're definitely right. Again, I think different tools help you to do different jobs. And the tools like the tools by Osterwalder and Pigneur, and his new book on how to test your ideas. They're all really great resources to help you validate these opportunities, make sure you have a scalable, repeatable business in there. And that's why I said it's a ‘zoom in and zoom out' type of process. And in the book, we actually also describe how these tools go together in a very complementing manner, especially because they not only help you to zoom in, but also to validate your initial potential and challenges. Ula Ojiaku:  28:58 So, let's move to the next part of this conversation. So, what books would you recommend to someone who wants to learn more about the topics we've discussed? Where to Play is the key one, but what other books would you recommend? Sharon Tal:  29:13 Yeah, okay. So, first of all, it's the trivial ones, those that are, you know, the, on the top of the list of the lean processes like the initial book by Steve Blank, and the books by Osterwalder and Pigneur, which described the Business Model/ Value Proposition Canvases, and of course, Eric Ries lean startup, these are the basic ones for the lean processes. I think it's challenging a bit to bring this startup methodologies into larger corporate settings. So, one book that I find that does it quite nicely is The Corporate Startup, by Tendai Viki and Dan Thomas. And they, they translate this process that comes from small organizations into processes, which are adequate for larger corporates and I think that's quite an interesting read. On a different perspective, I recently read a book called Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller, which talks about how to clearly phrase and define your messages within a specific market. So, I think, once you have done this search, validated it and decide to focus on pursuing a specific market opportunity, this is a very valuable next step read, because it really gives you a good perspective on how to simply explain your message and convey your message. Ula Ojiaku:  30:55 Well, thanks, Sharon. If any member of the audience wants to contact you, how can they reach you? Are you on social media? Do you have a website? Sharon Tal:  31:02 Yeah, sure. So, the natural first pass is our website. It's www.wheretoplay.co and then we have all the information about the Market Opportunity Navigator. You can download the worksheets and the Navigator for free. You can read all these posts and articles and examples and case studies and also about the book. So, there's a lot of information and resources out there. Actually, we also have free slide sets and materials for mentors, for consultants, for managers that want to run brainstorming sessions around this. So, there's a lot of materials out there and it's almost all for free except for the book of course. And then you can find me on LinkedIn, both my personal account, and its under Sharon Tal Itzkovitch and Where to Play, we also have a where to play account on LinkedIn. And I'm also active on Twitter under Where to Play, so you can find me on wheretoplay on Twitter. Ula Ojiaku:  32:05 Okay, I'll add all these links to the show notes. So, thanks a lot, Sharon. So, any final advice to the audience? Based on what we've discussed so far for someone or an organization starting off in their lean innovation journey? What would be your advice? Sharon Tal:  32:28 Oh, wow! Maybe the one key thing to keep in mind is that it's a continuous work. It's a continuous process, innovation and exploration never ends actually, for and doesn't matter if you're a startup or a large corporate. And given that it's a continuous effort. You need to make it a habit, and you need to make it iterative. And I think the more you're able to put systems and structured processes inside this, the easier it gets to make it iterative and to make it a habit. That's my advice. Ula Ojiaku:  33:08 That's a great advice. So, innovation and exploration never end. Make it a habit. Make it iterative. Yes. That's great. Fantastic. Thank you so much once more, Dr. Sharon for taking the time for this chat. It's been a great pleasure having you. Sharon Tal:  33:24 Thank you very much Ula for hosting me and it was my pleasure as well.

043: It was such a pleasure interviewing another great example of collaboration - fully virtual by the way. I am thrilled to introduce this episode with Daniela and Alex to you. Alex is a leading author, entrepreneur, and in-demand speaker whose work has changed the way established companies do business and how new ventures get started. He's currently ranked No. 4 of Thinkers50, the top 50 management thinkers worldwide. He invented the Business Model Canvas, Value Proposition Canvas, and Business Portfolio Map together with Yves Pigneur. His books include the international bestseller Business Model Generation, Value Proposition Design, Testing Business Ideas, The Invincible Company, and the newest one, High-Impact Tools for Teams. Since August 2018, Swiss Daniela Leutwyler has been a Personal Assistant to Alex Osterwalder. Just a few months earlier, in March 2018, she had started her own business as a Virtual Assistant with the goal of being able to pursue her profession regardless of location in the future. Leutwyler can look back on over 20 years of professional experience as an assistant, most recently for over seven years as Executive Assistant to Marc Walder, CEO Ringier AG. Follow Daniela, Alex and Strategyzer: https://strategyzer.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/osterwalder https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniela-leutwyler/ https://twitter.com/alexosterwalder

In this episode, my guest Alex Osterwalder shares 3 common traits you'd expect to find in an invincible company, the back story of how his book Business Model Generation came about from his PhD thesis, how he stays grounded as a leader and much more. You'll need a pen and notepad ready for taking some notes!   Bio: Dr. Alexander (Alex) Osterwalder is one of the world's most influential innovation experts, a leading author, entrepreneur and in-demand speaker whose work has changed the way established companies do business and how new ventures get started. Ranked No. 4 of the top 50 management thinkers worldwide, Osterwalder is known for simplifying the strategy development process and turning complex concepts into digestible visual models. He invented the Business Model Canvas, Value Proposition Canvas, and Business Portfolio Map – practical tools that are trusted by millions of business practitioners from leading global companies.   Strategyzer, Osterwalder's company, provides online courses, applications, and technology-enabled services to help organizations effectively and systematically manage strategy, growth and transformation. His books include the international bestseller Business Model Generation, Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want, Testing Business Ideas, The Invincible Company, and the recently-published High-Impact Tools for Teams.    Books/ Articles: The Invincible Company: Business Model Strategies From the World's Best Products, Services, and Organizations by Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur High-Impact Tools for Teams: 5 Tools to Align Team Members, Build Trust, and Get Results Fast by Stefano Mastrogiacomo & Alexander Osterwalder Testing Business Ideas: A Field Guide for Rapid Experimentation by David J. Bland & Alexander Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers by Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want by Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur Brain Rules, Updated and Expanded: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home and School by John Medina Article: The Culture Map https://www.strategyzer.com/blog/posts/2015/10/13/the-culture-map-a-systematic-intentional-tool-for-designing-great-company-culture Article: Allan Mulally (former President and CEO, Ford Motor Company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Mulally Article: Ping An (Banking & Insurance Group/ owner of Medical Platform ‘Good Doctor') https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping_An_Insurance   Alex's website & social media profiles: Website: https://www.strategyzer.com/ Twitter handle: @AlexOsterwalder LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osterwalder/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alexosterwalder/     Interview Transcript Ula Ojiaku: [00:28] In this episode we have Dr. Alex Osterwalder. To many, he needs no introduction. He is known for his phenomenal work on developing the Business Model Canvas. He has authored or co-authored a growing library of books including Business Model Generation; Value Proposition Design - How to Create Products and Services Customers Want; Testing Business Ideas, and one of the topics we focused on was his book that was released back in 2020, The Invincible Company. Since then, he has released a new book that's titled, Tools for Teams. I must mention though, that some of the references to concepts like travelling around the world may not be relevant in this current COVID-19 pandemic situation. However, the key principles of entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship, innovation, leadership (mentioned in this conversation with Alex), I believe these are still timeless and valid. Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, with no further ado, my conversation with Alex Osterwalder.   Ula Ojiaku: [01:49] Thank you, Alex, for joining us. It's an honour to have you on the show. Alex Osterwalder: [01:53] My pleasure. Great be here. Ula Ojiaku: [01:55] Great.  So, what would you say is your typical day, typical day in the life of Alex? How does it start? Alex Osterwalder: [02:04] It depends. So, you know, there's two typical days, one typical day is when I travel, and one typical day is when I don't travel, so they're very different - if you want. I probably spend about 50% of my time traveling all across the world talking about innovation, growth and transformation strategies. And then, you know, my day is I wake up, and it's “Oh, what country am I in now?”... And just trying to get the best out of the day and talk to people about growth and transformation. When I don't travel, my typical day is mixed between helping grow and manage, Strategyzer, the company I founded, but also spending a lot of time thinking about how, can we really help business leaders, business doers do a better job, right? So, I spend a lot of time thinking, sketching out things, I wouldn't say writing because when my co-authors and I create some content, it's usually more drawing first and writing after. But I'd say a lot of time, spent on pretty fundamental questions. And the rest of that when we're not thinking that we're doing or sharing. So that's the kind of mix - not very concrete maybe. But you know, it's so diverse, it really depends a little bit on the type of day, where I am, what the project is. So - very, very diverse days, I'd say. Ula Ojiaku: [03:22] What do you prefer - traveling or not traveling? Alex Osterwalder: [03:26] I enjoy both, right. So, what's important is after intense days of travel, you know, I just this week, I was in Paris with the CEOs of one of the largest companies in France. I like coming back to Switzerland and going on a hike in the mountains, while thinking about certain topics and digesting some of the things that I've seen. What I really enjoy is being in the field with doers and leaders seeing what they struggle with. But then being able to take the time to digest that and turn that into practical tools and processes that help them do a better job, right. So that mix is what I enjoy. The diversity is exactly what I enjoy. Ula Ojiaku: [04:07] That's great. You mentioned you like hiking, am I right in understanding that when you're not running workshops, or helping doers and businesses would hiking be one of your hobbies? Alex Osterwalder: [04:21] So, I can give you a concrete example, this week, I was traveling at the beginning of the week, and for two days, I had back to back calls for 12 hours with either leaders with my own team. So, tomorrow morning, I'm going to drive to the mountains - from my office, it's about an hour away. During the drive, I take calls so I work on the drive, because I can schedule that in advance. And then I pack out my skis and I put what we call skins on the skis and I walk up the mountain for maybe 90 minutes, take the skins off and ski down for 10 minutes. That's it, right. So, during that kind of hike, it's just kind of airing out the brain. But, you know, I wouldn't say that's just leisure time that's actually thinking and digesting. So, I would think about either the topics of the week when I was in the field with real clients and business people struggling with growth and transformation issues, or thinking of my own team in my own leadership challenges. So, it's work but it's in a different context. Then, what's going to happen tomorrow is I'm gonna jump in the car again and drive back to the office in the afternoon - I work out of my office. So that's how a typical kind of day looks like when I have some time to get out of the building. I do go for a ski tour. But it isn't really disconnecting. It's just thinking in a different environment, and then come back to the office, and maybe sketch something out on the wall or on the whiteboard. Ula Ojiaku: [05:46] It also sounds like you're kind of a visual person. So, you do lots of graphics, I mean, your books, The Business Model Generation, Value Proposition Design, and Testing Business Ideas - they are very visual and easy to read. Are you a very visual and artistic person? Alex Osterwalder: [06:06] Artistic, I'd not say because my visuals are pretty ugly, but visual 100%. So, I believe if you can't sketch it out, if you can't draw a problem, you probably didn't understand it well enough. Even complex challenges can be simplified down, not to mask the complexity, but actually just to get a handle of it and to think about the most essential things. So, the reason we use visuals in our books is actually less to just make them look pretty. It's because I do believe visuals are a language, a shared language. There are some things you can't describe easily with words. Like how am I going to describe with words my business model portfolio like that makes no sense, or even describing the business model with words doesn't really make sense. Sketching it out very quickly, and then having a paragraph that accompanies that sketch, that works right or even better, when I do presentations, I would build up the visual piece by piece while telling the story. So, I get bored when people say storytelling, and then it's a lot of blah, blah, blah. I like the storytelling with the visual message. And it's like a good voice over, you know, in a movie, that will go hand in hand. So, I think we don't use visual tools enough in our business practices. In certain circles, it's a tradition. If we take more of the IT field, you don't map out a server infrastructure without using visual tools. But in strategy and transformation, people talk too much, and they draw too little. Visual tools are unbeatable, they're unbeatable. They won't get you to do things completely differently. But they will get you to do things much faster, much clearer, because you have a shared language. So, when you have a shared language to map it out, to capture it, to create a visual artifact, you have better conversations about strategy, about business models, about culture. And that is incredibly important when we talk about these fuzzy topics, right? Or change management, like what the heck does that mean? But when you start visualizing this, we're moving from this state to that state. These are the obstacles; this is how we're going to overcome it. And you make all of that visual and tangible, not too much visuals, because then it's complicated, just the right amount. That is, you know, the magic of visual communication, where you still use words, you still can tell stories, but you just use the right communication tool at the right time. Ula Ojiaku: [08:37] You're saying, ‘…not too much visual, not too many words, just the right amount…' How do you strike the balance? Alex Osterwalder: [08:46] You don't. So, the way you figure out if you're on track or not, is by testing it right? So, let's say I share a slide deck, I can see in people's faces, are they getting it? Are they not getting it? I can listen to their questions. When the questions are really about good details where you can see they understood the essence and now they're going a step further, they got it – right? When people are confused and they ask very fundamental questions of what I just explained. Well, guess what, then the problem is with me, not with them. I made a mistake in the way I told the story. So, I never blame the audience, I always look for the mistake within and say, ‘okay, what should I have done differently?' So, the way you figure out if you struck the right balance, is by continuously testing. And then obviously, over time, if you take visual language, we've gotten pretty good at creating visual books; we know what works, we know what doesn't. The challenge then is when you get good at it, is to not get arrogant. So, you always need to remember, well, you know, maybe the world changed. So, what worked yesterday doesn't work today. So, you go fast, because you know, but you always need to remain humble, because maybe you know something that was right yesterday, not today, you got to be careful. So you go fast, because you know, but you still listen enough to question yourself enough that you figure out, when do you need to change, because a lot of people get famous, and then they believe what they say, believe their own BS, they forget to stay grounded because the world changes, and you need to go with the change. So that's another balance - once you figured it out, you need to make sure time doesn't move faster than you otherwise you become the dinosaur in the room. Ula Ojiaku: [10:26] So how do you keep yourself grounded? Alex Osterwalder: [10:30] Yeah, so it's not always easy, right? So, if I just take our company, it's constantly trying to create a culture where people can speak up. Constantly trying to create a culture where people don't fear critique - design critique. That's not easy, because even though we have a pretty flat hierarchy, when you're the founder, you're the founder. So, people will say ‘yeah, but you know, I'm not gonna tell this guy he's full of BS.' So, you need to create that culture where people dare to [speak up], that's number one. But then number two is just constantly staying curious, right? When you think you figured it out, you probably just know enough to come across, like looking like you figured it out, you know too little for really understanding it. So, I just work on the assumption that I never know enough. You can't know everything. Sometimes you don't need to go further because it's just you're now looking at the 20%. They're going to take too much time. But if you stay curious enough, you'll see the big shifts. If you listen to the weak signals, you'll see the big shift coming and you can surround yourself with people who are a little bit different. The more people are like you, the less you're going to see the shift coming and that's the problem of established companies. They do the same thing day in day out. They don't see what's coming. However, if, for example, you create a portfolio of projects where people can explore outside of your core business, then all of a sudden you see, ‘…wow, they're getting traction with that? I thought that was never going to be a market….' And, ‘they're starting that customer segment – really?' So, you need to create ecosystems that keep you alert. It's very hard again, so I don't trust myself to be able to check my own BS. So, you need to create ecosystems that keep you alert. I think that's the challenge. And you know, maybe my team will say, ‘yeah, Alex, you're talking about these things on a podcast.' But you know, you don't really do that. So, I really have to be careful that that doesn't happen. That's why I admire people who can rise to really, really senior positions, but they stay grounded. One of my favorite examples is Alan Mulally. He turned Ford from a 17 billion loss-making monster into a profitable company. I was really fortunate to get to know him. And he's just grounded, like, a really nice guy. So, it doesn't mean when you have some success, you have to get full of yourself, you just stay grounded, because… we're all just people at the end of the day, right? But it's a challenge, right? It's always a challenge to remind yourself, I knew something now, maybe tomorrow, it's different. I get passionate about this stuff. So, I just go on rambling. Ula Ojiaku: [13:09] You know, I could go on listening to you. I am passionate about it from a learning perspective. Now, let's move on to the next section. I understand that the Business Model Generation, the book, which you wrote in collaboration with Yves Pigneur, I hope I pronounced his name correctly. Yeah. Oh, well, thank you. So, it came about as a result of the work you were doing as part of your PhD studies. Could you tell us a bit more about that story? And how, you finally arrived at the Business Model Generation book and the artifacts? Alex Osterwalder: [13:46] Sure, sure. So, in year 2000, I became a PhD student with Yves Pigneur. And he was looking for somebody who could help him with mapping out business models. And the fundamental idea was, can we kind of create some computer aided design system- so, we could build business models, like architects build buildings and computer aided design? That was the fundamental assumption. But in order to make computer systems like that, you need a rigorous approach, right? You need to model, what is a business model can be fuzzy, because otherwise, how are you going to build some kind of system around that? So, in architecture, it's easy. We're talking about structures and about materials. In business, it's a bit harder, what are the structures? What are the materials, what are the building blocks? So that was the starting point. And I did my PhD with him - amazing collaboration. Then I went out into the world and did a couple of things that work to help scale a global not-for-profit, then I had a consulting firm together with a friend. But then ultimately, the business model work I did on my PhD got some traction; people started asking me if I could speak in Colombia, in Mexico. First at the periphery - it was pretty interesting. People started downloading the PhD (thesis), reading it in companies… So, there were a lot of weak signals. And then, when I had enough of those, I asked Yves, ‘hey, let's write this book that we always wanted to write.' So, we embarked on the journey of Business Model Generation. And we thought we can't write a book about business model innovation without doing it. So, we tried to do it in a different way. We did Kickstarter, before Kickstarter existed, we asked people to pay us, you know, because we needed the funding, or I didn't have any money, I just came out of doing not-for-profit work. So, we got people to pay us to help us write the book. And I did workshops around the world. And it was, really fun, entrepreneurial experience. And then we launched it and became a big success. And I think a little bit of the secret was, we built something with that book, or we designed something that we would have wanted to buy, there was no that there was no visual business book, there were visual business books, but not the type we wanted to buy. And turns out, almost 2 million people had the same kind of desire. And with that, we realized the power of visual books, we realized the power of visual tools. And we started digging deeper. And then we made more books, not because the world needs more books, they're enough out there. But we always tried to address the next business challenge we would see; we would try to create a tool. If the tool works, we would create a book around it. That was the Value Proposition Canvas. And we thought, okay, people are doing testing, but they're not really good at it. Let's write another book: Testing Business Ideas. And we did that in collaboration with David Bland. So, we created a library of experiments to help people get more professional. And then you know, we saw okay, large companies, they still can't innovate. Why don't we write a book called The Invincible Company and we give them a tool that helps them to do this in a large established company. So, every time we see a challenge, we try to build the tool and the book around it to help people around the world. So, it's kind of the same. And what's fun is that behind that, behind the books, we build the technology stack to help actually bring those tools into companies. So, you know, Strategyzer doesn't earn, we earn some money from the books, but the core is really building the technology stack. So, the idea that we had in the PhD is now what we're building 20 years later. Ula Ojiaku: [17:21] Oh wow! Now when you mentioned that your company, Strategyzer, builds the technology stack on which the books are based. What do you mean by that? Alex Osterwalder: [17:32]  Maybe the easiest way to describe it is that we believe in technology-enabled services. So typically, let's say big company comes to us and says, we want to work on growth and transformation, can you accompany one of our teams. Now, traditionally, a consultancy would just put a number of people on that. And then it's just the people are going to try to solve the problem - they sell hours. We look at it slightly differently. And we say there is a type of challenge that we can productize because it's actually the same challenge all the time, how do we go from idea to validation to scale. So, there are a couple of things there that are actually exactly the same for every single team that needs to go to through that process. And then there's some things that are very domain specific; in Pharma, you will test ideas differently than in Consumer Goods, etc., etc. But we would then start to build the online training and the software platform that would allow us to address that challenge of going from idea to validation to scale, in a lot more structured way, in a lot more technology enabled way. There're things where a human coach adds huge value. And there's things where online learning or a software system will create a lot more value; online collaboration, tracking the data, comparing the data understanding how much have you de-risked your idea so far. I'm sharing that with senior leaders. All of that can be automated. The way I like to compare it is like ERP's in companies like SAP and so changed operations, there are tons of companies out there and today, we have a lot less. But when they changed operations, they did that with software, I think the same is going to happen to strategy and innovation today. That today, we don't use a lot of good software, we use PowerPoint, Word, and maybe Excel, right? That's not good enough. Those are general purpose tools, which create a lot of value. But you shouldn't use those to manage your strategy and innovation, because that's becoming a very dynamic process. When you talk to a big company, a corporation, they have thousands of projects going on at the same time; thousand innovation projects. How do you manage that portfolio? It's more than just typical project management, we're talking innovation project portfolio, so you need to understand different things. That's the kind of infrastructure that we build, not just the software, also the tools and the content, online training, so become scalable, so people can change the way they work. Ula Ojiaku: [20:08] Fascinating. Now, when you talk about the automated part of your tech platform, are you talking about dashboards? Alex Osterwalder: [20:16] Yeah, let me give you a simple example. Right? So, when I'm a team, and I start mapping out my idea, an idea is just an idea, right? Technology, market opportunity… I need to create my Value Proposition Canvas and my Business Model Canvas to give it a little bit more shape. How am I going to capture value from customers? How am I going to capture value for my organization? Right - that you need to sketch out. Okay, you could use a digital tool to do that because then you can share as a team – sort of useful but not breakthrough. But then as a team, when you start to manage your hypothesis, you need to ask yourself, ‘okay, what needs to be true for this idea to work?' You might have 10, 20, 50 hypotheses, you want to start to track those hypotheses. You want to start to track ‘how are you testing those hypotheses? What is the evidence that I've captured?' You need actually whole-knowledge management around the evidence that you've captured in the field. ‘Oh, we did 50 interviews, we have about 30 quotes that confirm that people have a budget for that particular process', right? That is not something you easily manage in a spreadsheet, it gets a mess very quickly; that's at the team level. Now, once you have that data captured, what if you could take that data and automatically create a risk profile so the team knows ‘this is how much we de risk our idea. Oh, we looked at desirability, maybe 10% of desirability, 20% of feasibility. We looked at some viability...' Once you have data, you can manipulate the data in very different ways and understand the challenge better - that's at the team level. Now imagine at the senior level where you have, again, you know, 100, 500, 1,000 teams doing that; you want to understand which team is working on the biggest opportunity. ‘Okay, this one. But yeah, we invested maybe half a million dollars in that team, but they actually didn't de-risk the idea at all.' So, it looks like a great opportunity, but there's no de-risking. So actually, that might just be hot air, right? And you want to be able to do that for a thousand teams. Today, the way we do it is the teams pitch to a manager who pitches to the senior leader. And that's just a mess. So, it's very similar to what I mentioned with ERP. There's a lot of data there, that is hidden in different places - in spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations. There's no way to aggregate that. So, guess what? Strategy today and innovation is badly managed - if people are doing it right, that's already another challenge. You know? Ula Ojiaku: [22:45] Okay Alex Osterwalder: [22:46] Today, people are not that good at strategy and innovation. But that's radically changing, because the tasks are getting really big. It's not just about profit, it's also about impact. So, there are a lot of exciting challenges ahead of us, that require a different toolset and different software stack to even be able to do that. Ula Ojiaku: [23:05] Wow. So, do you consider lean innovation important for organizations of all sizes? And if so, why? Why? Why? I know, it's an obvious question. But why do you consider that the case. Alex Osterwalder: [23:20] Very simple and the challenge is different for the startup than for the established company. So, for the startup… So, for both… let's start with what's shared. For both, it's a matter of survival, okay? Now, let me start with the team first. Well, what's the challenge when you're a startup, you don't have any customers, you don't have any revenues, you might have some self-funded or VC funding, you're gonna run out of money. And I think we're in an age where there's too much money. So, for a while you for quite a while, you can live without a business model, we have some great examples, billion-dollar unicorns that have no business model, and they're still alive, because they're just funded by VCs. That is a very rare thing. That's not for everybody. So, at one point, you do need to understand how you create and capture value. So, you want to get as fast as possible, from idea to not just validated business, but actually a company that makes money that captures value, right? Because, you know, yes, it is. You can say, ‘yeah, but the beginning is about users.' That's okay. But users, you know, without revenues, not going to keep you alive for a while, VC funding is not a revenue stream. Let me just make that clear. VC funding is not a revenue stream. Ula Ojiaku: [24:34] They are out for a profit as well. Alex Osterwalder: [24:36] So sometimes young founders confuse that. Yeah, you can focus on funding. But ultimately, the funding needs to allow you to find a profitable and scalable business model. Sometimes people forget that. So that's survival at the startup stage, right? Now, what Lean does, and I'm not sure the word is very well chosen, because Lean comes actually from making things better. But in the startup world, is actually figuring out what's going to work in the first place, you're not making your business model better, you're trying to figure out which one is going to work. So, the testing of your idea is essential to get faster from idea to real business, or, in some cases, to shut it down. Because let's say you take VC money, and you find out, this is not a scalable business, you better give the money back or buy out the VC share, because all they care about is scale. And there's quite a few companies that bought back their shares, Buffer is a very well-known example, because they figured out the business model they're comfortable with, which is not further scaling. Highly profitable… definitely growth, but not the insane kind of growth VC venture capital's looking for. So you get faster from idea to real business with the Lean Startup approach and Customer Development by Steve Blank and Eric Reis, or you get faster to the point where you say, ‘this is not working, I'm going to change, I'm going to stop - not pivot - I'm going to stop.' And then, radical pivot - maybe you start a new startup with a completely different goal. That's for startups. For the established companies, it's a matter of survival for a different reason. Because their business models are dying and expiring. So, most established companies are very good at efficiency innovation; new technologies, digital transformation…, they improve their business model. Now, that is important, and you need to do it. But if you just get better at what you're doing while your business model is dying, you're just going to more efficiently die. So, at the same time, you need to learn how to reinvent yourself. So, it's a matter of survival that you figure out what's tomorrow's business model. And you can't do that without the Lean approach because it's not about making big bets, it's about making a lot of small bets. But here's the nugget that people get wrong. So, they say, ‘yeah, we're gonna do Lean Startup.' So, they have five projects, and they believe that out of those five projects, if we just pivot enough, we're gonna get a multibillion-dollar growth engine. That is delusion at its best. Because, if you look at early stage venture capital, you actually need to invest in at least 250 projects to get one breakthrough success. So, what it means for established companies, if they really want to find the winner, they need to invest in tons of losers. And they're not losers, per se. But some of those projects need to be killed after three months, some of those projects might make 10 million or $100 million in revenues. But only something like one out of 250 will move towards 500 million or a billion. That, is a matter of survival. So, the companies that don't build an innovation portfolio and don't apply Lean in a broad way, not for five projects, not enough - that's what I call innovation theater. They need to apply it across the board, right? And I think that's where Steve Blank's work, our work together has actually made a pretty big difference. Now, we just need to convert a couple more companies, because there are only very few that have been able to pull this off - that are really what we would call ‘Invincible Companies.' Ula Ojiaku: [28:15] Can you tell me a bit more about the book, Invincible Company? Alex Osterwalder: [28:19] So, there are three main components to the Invincible Company. Let me tell you about the three characteristics of an invincible company. The first thing is, invincible companies constantly reinvent themselves. So, they're not laying back and saying, ‘hey, I was successful', they don't get arrogant. They constantly reinvent themselves. Typical example is Amazon, constantly reinventing their business model; going into Amazon Web Services, going into logistics, etc. That's number one. Number two, invincible companies, they don't compete on products and technology alone. They compete on superior business models. I believe it's much harder to stay ahead with technology because it's easy to copy. Patents don't make that much sense alone anymore. It's all about speed. So today, if you don't build a superior business model, it's hard to stay ahead. Let me give you an example. Take Apple with the iPhone. It's not the phone per se that's keeping them ahead. What's keeping them ahead is the ecosystem around iOS, with a lot of developers that create a lot of applications; you cannot copy that. You can copy the phone technology - there are tons of phone makers out there. There're only two operating systems, right. So that's a superior business model. The third one is, invincible companies; they transcend industry boundaries. Today, if you look at Amazon, you can't classify them in an industry. They do e-commerce, they do logistics for IT for, you know, web, web infrastructure for companies around the world. Their logistics company - they're competing with UPS. So, you can't classify them in an industry, they have a superior business model. My favorite example, at the moment is a company called Ping An in China, one of the top 30 largest companies in the world, in terms of profitability. Well, what did they do? They moved within seven years, from being a banking and insurance conglomerate, towards becoming a technology player that built the biggest health platform on the planet, a platform called Good Doctor. That came from a bank and insurer - can you imagine that? Right? So, they transcended industry boundaries. And that's why they're ahead of everybody else. So, those are the three characteristics of invincible companies. And then in the book we show well, how do you actually get there? We just described you know, how that animal looks like. How do you become that? So, three things. One, you need to manage a portfolio of business models, you need to improve what you have, and invent the future - innovation funnels, etc… What I just told you before.  It's not about making five bets, it's about making 250 bets. And how do you manage that? How do you manage measure risk and uncertainty? Second thing, superior business models; we have a library of patterns, business model patterns, where we give inspiration to people so they can ask themselves questions: ‘How could I improve my business model? How could I create recurring revenues? How could I create a resource castle to protect my business model? How could I shift from product to service? How could I shift like Apple from selling a device to becoming a platform?' So that's the second aspect. And then the third one, which most companies are struggling with, is ‘how do I create an innovation culture systematically? How do I design and manage an innovation culture?' So, it's almost, you could say three books in one. So, you get three for one, if you get The Invincible Company. Ula Ojiaku: [31:54] It sounds very exciting in terms of the work that you must have done to collate these trends and attributes that make up an invincible company. So, what exactly made you guys now say, ‘hey, we need to write this book?' Alex Osterwalder: [32:09] That's a question we always ask because there's so many books out there; the world does not need another business book. So, if we put energy into this, because these projects are pretty big, we had a team of five people working on it, three designers actually six people, three content people. So, it's a crazy effort. The reason was very simple. We had already put a lot of tools out there  - and processes - and companies were not moving at the scale we believe is necessary for them to transform to either revive their business models, or tackle challenges like climate change, right? So, you have to be very inventive, innovative, to actually make a profit and become sustainable, like Unilever. So, we said, ‘well, what's missing?' And the big piece missing is the shared language at the senior level, where they can think about ‘how do I manage a portfolio of businesses to fight off disruption? So, I don't get disrupted. But so, I am among the disruptors. So, I invent the future, like Ping An, like Amazon - they invent the future.' You know, they're not the victim of Porter's five forces, they shaped entire industries, right? Porter's five forces was 1985. That's quite a while ago. ‘The world's changed; we need new analytical tools…', I like to joke, right? But so, we didn't see companies moving enough. So, we asked, ‘could we create the tools to help these companies to help the leaders change?' So, we created a very practical set of tools and processes, and procedures so these companies would start to move. Because a lot of senior leaders will tell you, ‘but innovation is a black box. I don't know how to do this. I know how to do mergers and acquisitions. But I don't really know how to do this innovation thing.' So, they kind of move towards buzzwords. ‘Yeah, we're gonna do agile!' Well, that means nothing per se. So yeah, we're gonna work in an agile way when we do this. But that's the mindset. But there's a more to it when you really want to start building an invincible company. So, we packaged all of what we've learned in the field, plus our whole thinking of how can we make it easy for them to capture and work on it. So, taking down the barriers to action, so nothing would prevent them from action. That's how we always decide, ‘should we do another book?' Well, only if we believe we have a very substantial contribution to make. Ula Ojiaku: [34:37] Talking about the three ‘hows' of becoming an invincible company, you did say that the third element was about changing the culture.  Alex Osterwalder: [34:48] Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Ula Ojiaku: [34:49] Now, there is this book I read by John Kotter about Leading Change... Alex Osterwalder: [34:57] Yeah, yeah absolutely Ula Ojiaku: [34:58] And culture changes last. So, what's your view on how best to change culture because usually, people are resistant to change? Alex Osterwalder: [35:09] So, I believe you can actively design and manage culture. You know, every company has a culture.  It's just that very few companies design and manage their culture. So, the first thing is, you need to map out the culture that you have. So again, we're tool obsessed. So, we created a tool together with Dave Gray called the Culture Map. And with the Culture Map, you can map out the culture you have, and you can design the culture you want. Okay, that's in a general way. In The Invincible Company, we talk about innovation culture. So, we show what are the blockers that are holding companies back from creating an innovation culture? And we show what are the enablers that companies would have to put in place to create an innovation culture? So simple stuff, right? What's the blocker? I'll give you some blockers. Companies require business plans, business plans are the enemy of innovation, because you force people to sketch out a fantasy over 50 pages, and then you invest in a fantasy and it blows up in your face. It's ridiculous. So, business plans are one enemy of innovation. It's a blocker. Okay, let's look at an enabler. An enabler would be to embrace a culture where you can experiment, fail, learn and iterate. That sounds trivial. But in most companies, you cannot fail, you'll jeopardize your career. So, you need to create a space where experimentation and failure is not just possible - it's mandatory because you know, you need to test ideas. So, if you don't do that deliberately; if you don't have the governance that's going to reward that, in the right place, it's not going to work. And now a lot of people would say, ‘yeah, we do that… we do that.' But it depends how you're doing ‘that'. So, we're very specific with these things and say, well, ‘you're at risk of having an innovation theater, if you don't enable leadership support.' ‘Yeah, well our leaders are supporting it…' Okay? ‘How much time is your leader, your CEO spending on innovation every week?' If he or she is not spending 40% of his or her time on innovation, innovation will not happen at that company, period. So that's an enabler that is not a soft factor is a very hard factor. Because it's actually even less about what the CEO does. It's the symbolic value of a CEO spending 40% of his or her time on innovation, which will show ‘this is important.' And then everybody will work towards what's important for the senior leadership. So, all those kinds of things - we codify them, to take them from the anecdotal evidence towards, ‘here are the three areas you need to look at: leadership support, organizational design, innovation practice. You need to work on those three areas. And you can start to systematically design an innovation culture.' So, I'd say the difference between the days of Kotter, I still love Kotter's work, is I do believe today, we can more actively design culture and make it happen. Is it easy? No, it's really hard. Are we going to face resistance? Yes. But if you do it well, I can tell you when it comes to innovation, people are hungry for it. They're just waiting for it. So, all you have to do - you don't even need to design enablers, just take away the obstacles and everything else will happen. Ula Ojiaku: [38:40] Oh, fantastic. So, the what book do you find yourself giving as a gift to people the most and why - in addition to your fantastic suite of books? Alex Osterwalder: [38:53] So… there's just so many that I don't have one ‘go-to' book that I would really recommend. It's depending on what are people looking at, you know, what is their challenge, and I would recommend the right kind of book that I have in mind for the right challenge. So, I don't like doing an overall thing. There is one book that I just put is the foundation of working the right way, which is John Medina's Brain Rules. So, it's actually a brain scientist. He's very funny. He wrote a book called Brain Rules. It's all based on peer reviewed science, there's a certain number of rules that you need to follow in everything you do: designing a workshop, managing your company, you know, teaching something, being a parent. So, if you follow those brain rules, well, you're very likely to have more success. With the work you're doing, you're gonna achieve better results, because you're following the way your brain works, right? And a lot of the work we do is actually not, not right. So, I'll give you an example. He talks about visuals, every single person on the planet is visual, guess what? It's evolution – (there) used to be a lion running after us. Well, we would need to see it and run away. That's visual. That's evolution. Those who didn't see it coming, they're not here anymore, right? Evolution ate them up. So, we're visual, by definition. That's why when you write when you create a book or a slide deck, using visuals is not a nice to have; of course, everybody has their style. But if you really do it well, you use the words for the right thing, use visuals for the right thing, you're gonna have a huge impact. Because by evolution, every one of us, every single one of us is visual. So that's one brain rule, which sounds a little bit trivial. But the really good insights there of rules you should never break. Right? So that's one I do recommend. But then everything else is based on the challenges I see with, you know, what people are struggling with. Ula Ojiaku: [40:47] I would add that to my library of books to read then. Now, would you have any advice for individuals starting up in their entrepreneurship journey? And also, what advice would you have? So, there are two questions here: what do you have for organizations starting off their lean innovation journey? So, individuals and organizations. Alex Osterwalder: [41:14] So, for both, I would say fear nothing, embrace failure. So, you know, then people tell me, ‘don't always talk about failure. It's not about failure. It's not about failures, is it? It's about learning.' No, it's not about learning. It's about actually adapting your idea until you figure out what works, right? But a lot of that will be failure. And a big part of the innovation journey is you know, falling down and getting up. So, my big advice to individuals is, don't believe those people on the cover of a magazine because you don't see the failure they went through. And if there's somebody who didn't have that much failure, they kind of got lucky. But that's one in a million. So, don't get blinded by those pictures that the press put in front of us. Success; there is no shortcut. Yeah, you can get lucky. But that's one out of a million. Success is hard work. It's a lot of failure. It's a lot of humiliation. Those who get over humiliation, those who can stand up, those are, those are gonna win. However, sometimes you need to stop, right? So, when people say, ‘ah, never give up!' Well, knowing when to stop is not giving up. When you're not made for something, when the idea (you had) – (you find out) there's no business there, you better stop because you're gonna waste all of your money and energy for something that's not there. But you can take those learnings and apply it, maybe to a different opportunity. So never, never fear failure, right is an important one to always get up. That's for individuals. For companies, I'd say go beyond innovation theater. So, break the myths and figure out how innovation really works. Open up what still might be a black box or question yourself, you know, are we really doing Strategic Growth and Innovation? Because a lot of companies will say, ‘Yeah, we do that, we do Lean Startup, we do Agile.' Yeah, but then you look under the hood, it's really innovation theater. When you really do this well, you actually invest in 200, 300, 400 projects at a time, small amounts. And you're really good at killing ideas to let the best emerge. So, it's not about making a few big bets. It's about making hundreds and hundreds of small bets. And then continuously invest like a venture capitalist in those ideas and teams that are bubbling up, right. So, go beyond innovation theater, learn how this really works. This is a profession. This is not something you learn over a weekend at a masterclass anymore. That's how you get started. This is a hard profession treated differently than management. Managing an innovation, management and execution and innovation and entrepreneurship are two different planets. So please accept that. That's my advice to organizations. Take it seriously, otherwise, you're gonna die. Ula Ojiaku: [43:51] Thank you so much. It's been a wonderful conversation with you, Alex, thank you again for being on this show. Alex Osterwalder: [43:58] Thanks for having me. Wonderful questions. Great conversation.

In this episode, we are joined by Amy C. Edmondson to discuss her latest book, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. Amy is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School and is the world expert on psychological safety, a topic recently made famous by the findings of Google's Project Aristotle, the quest to build the perfect team. What Was Covered How leaders can create psychologically safe environments in the workplace, in service of innovation and profitable growth. The ‘fearless' organization, and why fear-based leadership strategies are a recipe for failure. How leaders leverage approaches from indigenous cultures to deal with some of the worlds more pressing VUCA challenges Key Takeaways and Learnings Psychological safety: why workplaces should be safe spaces for employees to explore, experiment and solve problems. Uncertainty and interdependence: why human and interpersonal fears create unsafe work environments. Silence: why keeping quiet can be dangerous and result in enormous mistakes and value destruction, as well as lost market opportunities. Links and Resources Mentioned in this Episode Get in touch with Amy via Twitter or LinkedIn Amy's page at Harvard Business School The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth, a book by Amy Edmondson What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team, HBS case by Charles Duhigg Cynthia Carroll at Anglo American, an article by Gautam Mukunda, Lisa Mazzanti and Aldo Sesia The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women, a book by Kate Moore Questions Are the Answer: A Breakthrough Approach to Your Most Vexing Problems at Work and in Life, a book by Hal Gregersen Other mentions: Thinkers50, Bridgewater, Eilleen Fisher fashion Company, Pixar, Volkswagen, Wells Fargo Human Innovation, Smart Machines with Ed Hess, OutsideVoices Podcast Inventing The Future with Business Model Innovation with Alex Osterwalder, OutsideVoices Podcast Connect with OutsideVoices Follow us on LinkedIn Check us out on Twitter

In this episode of #TheSpeakerShow, Sean Pillot de Chenecey interviews Alex Osterwalder - one of the world's most influential strategy and innovation experts, a leading author, entrepreneur, and in-demand speaker whose work has changed the way established companies do business and how new ventures get started.   Ranked No. 4 of the top 50 management thinkers worldwide, Osterwalder is known for simplifying the strategy development process and turning complex concepts into digestible visual models. Together with Yves Pigneur, he invented the Business Model Canvas, Value Proposition Canvas, and Business Portfolio Map – practical tools that are trusted by millions of business practitioners from leading global companies. Strategyzer, the company he co-founded, is an innovation powerhouse, providing online courses, applications, and technology-enabled services to help organizations effectively and systematically manage strategy, growth, and transformation.   In this dynamic episode, we discuss a range of his viewpoints on issues including:  Business Model Generation  Value Proposition Design  Testing Business Ideas Invincible Companies Inventing the Future

My guest today is Alexander Osterwalder, one of the world's most influential strategy and innovation experts, a leading author, entrepreneur, and in-demand speaker whose work has changed the way established companies do business and how new ventures get started. Ranked No. 4 of the top 50 management thinkers worldwide, Osterwalder is known for simplifying the strategy development process and turning complex concepts into digestible visual models. Together with Yves Pigneur, he invented the Business Model Canvas, Value Proposition Canvas, and Business Portfolio Map – practical tools that are trusted by millions of business practitioners. The topic is his book The Invincible Company: How to Constantly Reinvent Your Organization with Inspiration From the World's Best Business Models (The Strategyzer Series). In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss: Diversified Portfolio Quarterly Return Predictability in your Execution Business Experimentation and Adaptation Strategic Exploration Capability Business Models Leadership System Exploration and Execution The Invincible Company Innovation Building Fundamentals Creating Value Jump in! --- I'm MICHAEL COVEL, the host of TREND FOLLOWING RADIO, and I'm proud to have delivered 10+ million podcast listens since 2012. Investments, economics, psychology, politics, decision-making, human behavior, entrepreneurship and trend following are all passionately explored and debated on my show. To start? I'd like to give you a great piece of advice you can use in your life and trading journey… cut your losses! You will find much more about that philosophy here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/trend/ You can watch a free video here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/video/ Can't get enough of this episode? You can choose from my thousand plus episodes here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/podcast My social media platforms: Twitter: @covel Facebook: @trendfollowing LinkedIn: @covel Instagram: @mikecovel Hope you enjoy my never-ending podcast conversation!

Alexander Osterwalder is an entrepreneur, author, business model innovator, and co-founder of Strategyzer, a SaaS company that helps organizations develop better growth engines, powerful business models, and so much more. In this episode, Alex discusses the innovative way he wrote the Business Model Generation book and explains why the Business Model Canvas is an excellent tool for businesses looking to challenge their current business model. 02:55 - Why did Alex write the book, Business Model Generation. 04:00 - How Alex crowd sourced the book. 09:00 - What is the Business Model Canvas all about? 11:15 - There is no such thing as the one and only business tool. You need to combine tools based on your needs. 17:15 - What kinds of conversations is Alex hearing from the C-suite executives about business models? 19:40 - How do you price a cure that's going to heal people with one injection? 21:35 - You can still be innovative on inferior technology. 24:00 - We're still stuck in the last century when it comes to developing innovation. 29:00 - There are some great lessons you can learn from Expresso. 34:15 - Large corporations are trying hard to be innovative, but only a few of them are able to succeed. 36:55 - What is Alex's business model? 41:55 - What has Alex changed his mind about recently? 43:40 - What does Alex do to remain creative? 44:35 - What does Alex attribute his success to in life? Resources: http://www.outsidelens.com/outsidevoices 

Alexander Osterwalder is the Co-Founder of Strategyzer and author of, “Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers” and “Business Model You: A One-Page Method For Reinventing Your Career.” Osterwalder gives his recommendations on what people should do when writing business plans. He shares his thoughts on whether entrepreneurs should just skip writing business plans and just “do” instead.   He then discusses how much time one should spend on planning vs operating a business.   Dr. Alexander Osterwalder works as an independent author, speaker and advisor with a particular focus on business model innovation, strategic management and management innovation. He regularly performs keynote speeches and workshops on the topic of business model innovation in companies, in business schools and at conferences around the world.   Besides his independent activities he is partner at Arvetica, a consulting boutique focusing on the private banking and wealth management industry. His role includes business development and the management of a peer knowledge exchange platform for senior executives in private banking. The platform aims at helping senior executives and private banking professionals understand the changing industry landscape, notably from other leading personalities, such as CEOs of top Swiss and international banks.   Before that Dr. Osterwalder founded and ran BusinessModelDesign.com, a consulting boutique active in strategy consulting with a focus on business model innovation. He also helped develop and implement the strategy and business concept of a globally active not for profit network called The Constellation for over one year in Thailand. The Constellation brought knowledge management methods from the private sector (particularly BP) to the health sector to better respond to the challenges of HIV/AIDS and Malaria.   Dr. Osterwalder has a Ph.D. in Management Information Systems (MIS) from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, where he worked as a teaching and research assistant and published extensively. He also developed and taught a seminar on Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D).   Previously, he was active as an entrepreneur in the banking sector and as an online business journalist for BILANZ. He is an inaugural member of the Open World Initiative (OWI) of the Evian Group at IMD, Switzerland.   Visit Strategyzer at www.Strategyzer.com.   Learn more about Osterwalder's business tips at www.businessmodelgeneration.com andwww.businessmodelalchemist.com.    Find out more about Alex Osterwalder at www.alexosterwalder.com.