Innovation you can rely on with Alex Osterwalder, CEO of Strategyzer and top 10 business thinker: from guesswork to strategic exploration that pays off. Tools for reinvention in the AI age.

Whether you’re a business leader, entrepreneur, or someone reinventing yourself, the way you think about innovation will shape your future. 

Innovation isn’t about guessing or chasing shiny ideas. It’s about having a process, the right tools, and the discipline to test, learn, and scale what creates value. 

In this episode, I sit down with Alex Osterwalder—one of the world’s most influential strategy and innovation thinkers, inventor of the Business Model Canvas, bestselling author, and CEO of Strategyzer. Alex has changed how the world approaches business design. Millions of entrepreneurs and leaders use his tools to innovate with clarity instead of chaos. 

We dive deep into the fundamental mistakes both large corporations and startups make: falling in love with ideas, building too much too fast, and only later discovering customers don't care. 

Perhaps most valuable is Alex's framework for balancing core business operations ("exploit") with future-focused innovation ("explore"). This practical approach helps organizations avoid the common trap of applying existing business rules to innovation projects—a mistake that almost guarantees failure.

Whether you're leading a Fortune 500 company, building a startup, or reinventing your own career, this episode offers actionable insights to make innovation less of a gamble and more of a repeatable process. 

What You’ll Learn 

• From Volleyball to Strategy: How Alex’s unlikely journey shaped his obsession with creating and simplifying tools for business. 
• Why Business Plans Fail: The origin of the Business Model Canvas and why structure beats guesswork. 
• AI & Innovation: What AI changes (everything) and what it doesn’t (the fundamentals). 
• Portfolio Thinking: Why great companies run many small bets, kill weak ones fast, and scale the winners. 
• Avoiding Zombie Projects: How to spot and stop initiatives that drain resources but deliver no evidence of value. 
• Systems, Not Slogans: Why excitement isn’t enough—innovation needs the right structures, incentives, and processes to thrive. 
• Personal Success Strategy: Alex’s reflections on what success means beyond growth and money, and why defining your own metrics of success is essential. 

👤 Guest Bio: Alex Osterwalder 

Dr. Alex Osterwalder is the founder & CEO of Strategyzer and a visiting professor at IMD Business School. Ranked among the world’s top 10 management thinkers (Thinkers50), he is best known for inventing the Business Model Canvas together with Yves Pigneur. Alex has authored five global bestsellers, including Business Model Generation, Value Proposition Design, Testing Business Ideas, The Invincible Company, and High-Impact Tools for Teams. Through Strategyzer, he helps organizations around the globe build innovation capabilities and transform systematically 

🔗 Links Mentioned 

• Strategyzer 
• Alex on LinkedIn 

Innovation isn’t luck—it’s design.
Tune in to this episode to learn how to turn your vision into a system of repeatable wins, master the fundamentals that don’t change, and lead with clarity in a world of uncertainty.  

Transcript

Episode Introduction

Speaker 1 0:00

Hello and welcome back to Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Sharina. I'm your host, your executive leadership coach and partner in change and transformation, and I'm beyond excited today to bring you a conversation with Alex Osterwalder, the mind behind some of the most widely used business strategy and innovation tools in the world, like the business model canvas and value proposition canvas. You can even Google it or chat GPT at L. You'll probably find at your fingertips. Most leaders and entrepreneurs guess their way through so much needed these days innovation. They fall in love with ideas, build too much too fast and only later realize customers don't care about most of it. Alex has spent his career fixing this exact problem. He shows us how to design innovation like architects design buildings with blueprints, tools and processes that turn vision into reality. In this episode, alex shares how to avoid things like zombie projects you know, those things that you start and never finish, which very often end up draining a lot of resources, from volleyball to strategy. How Alex's unlikely journey shaped his obsession with creating and simplifying tools for business and innovation. We're going to dive into that as well why business plans fail, why innovation plans fail, the origin of the business model canvas and why structure and how structure beats grasswork every time.

Speaker 1 1:55

Ai and innovation we're going to talk about that, of course, as well, and Alex's view on how AI changes everything and nothing when it comes to fundamentals. We're going to talk about those fundamentals Portfolio thinking, why great companies run many small bets, kill weak ones fast and scale the winners. I think we should approach our life's innovations and change that way as well. We're going to talk about life's innovation as well Systems, not slogans. Why excitement for innovation isn't enough Innovation needs the right structures, incentives and processes to thrive. And then we're going to end with personal success Alex's reflection on what success means beyond growth and money, and why defining your own metrics of success is essential.

Alex's Journey from Volleyball to Business

Speaker 1 2:53

If you ever wondered how do I make innovation less of a gamble and more of a repeatable process, whether that's personal innovation, your company's innovation or career innovation. If you ever wondered what's the role of AI in shaping strategy innovation execution today, how do companies stay relevant without burning people out, with change and wasting ton of money? Whether you are leading a Fortune 500 company guys or building a startup Alex, work with 500 companies and startups or you're simply reinventing yourself. This episode will give you practical insights and tools and strategies and maybe even more courage to create the future instead of waiting for it. So grab your notebook, your hot beverage of choice or maybe your headphones, to get walking and let's dive into this powerful conversation with Alex Osterwalder. Alex Osterwalder, welcome to ChangeWired podcast, so good to have you here.

Speaker 1 4:09

Pleasure to be here. Yes, I'm feeling super lucky to have an hour or so of your time because I feel like you're one of the top, best kept secrets in the business world, in the world of strategy and innovation, with all the work that you did with one of the top companies in the world, also a lot of new ventures, and you wrote a lot of what I believe foundational books on business strategy, innovation strategy. You are also a professor at one of the top business schools and a lot of other things, so very happy to have you on the show. Thank you for joining us today. Thanks for having me. I'd like to begin from somewhere very early on in your journey. Again, today, you are one of the top thinkers in the world on business strategy and innovation strategy. Thinkers in the world on business strategy and innovation strategy. But how did it all start? Like if we were to go back to eight, nine year old Alex, what did you dream about? Who did you want to be when you grow up? And yeah, let's start there.

Speaker 2 5:17

Okay, well, that's far back. I just always liked, you know, to create things and it turns out that today I like creating businesses and help others create businesses or new innovations, so kind of that was the kernel. I was not, you know, into business as a small kid, but I was into creating stuff and, at the end of the day, creating an innovation or a business is the same thing. It's an artifact, something you create. So it kind of started there Then. Maybe what a lot of people don't know is that my career ambitions were completely different. I wanted to be a professional beach volleyball player After school. That was kind of my direction. I didn't make it, but my beach volleyball partner actually did. He went on to win a bronze medal at the Olympics, so it was fun to be there.

Speaker 1 6:04

So I was at least I got part of that.

Speaker 2 6:06

You know ambition by joining my friend watching at the Olympics in Athens.

Speaker 1 6:11

That's amazing. Yeah, thank you for sharing this twist in the history of Alex. Yeah, and from there, from that path, well, how did it end? And maybe how did you transition to a different one?

Speaker 2 6:24

Well, the transition actually had to do with volleyball. So I went to the University of Lausanne and I went because there was good beach volleyball there. Then I went to business school, got excited about that actually, then switched to political science, so that was an interesting one. Actually, they kind of kicked me out of business school because I wasn't good enough or not, you know, it's too much on the beach volleyball court. Then went back to business school and did a PhD on the topic of business models. So that's kind of how the whole business model theme started. But again, you know why business models? Because it's that thing you create is that business model? I was interested, you know, as a teenager and then later on in business not necessarily entrepreneurship, you know, in Switzerland that wasn't really a thing. But what is business? How do you run businesses, how does this work? That was a theme kind of throughout and then became a key theme when I started my PhD with Yves Pignor, who became a good friend and co-author for the last 20 years.

Speaker 1 7:29

Yeah, I was also wondering how do you pronounce that name, and now you covered it Yves Pignor. Yeah, so you guys created again some of the foundational books now on business strategy, innovation strategy. So, yeah, you mentioned that you started this PGD journey and you developed quite a few tools into quite an extensive piece of work. I guess what I'm trying to ask is what did you see in the business world that was lacking that you decided to dedicate that much amount of your time and energy into developing these tools like business model canvas or value proposition canvas?

Origin of Business Model Canvas

Speaker 2 8:09

So it did. That really started with Yves' idea. He had a lot of entrepreneurs from the polytechnical school coming to him and showing them a business plan and business plans don't work in innovation and entrepreneurship. So he always kind of wondered like couldn't there be something more like architects computer aided design for architects, where you can use the power of computers? Today, with AI, that seems like a natural thing that we started back then to ask could we use the power of computing and structure to think through businesses? So when you want to do that, you need to structure what a business model is.

Speaker 2 8:52

So the PhD was all about defining what a business model is. There are quite a few concepts out there. We weren't the first to talk about the topic, but then, you know, with my dissertation I was the first to kind of build a more rigorous model on which you could build software on top, and that was part of the prototype of my PhD. So that's how it all started. It was basically Eve's idea Could we make a computer-aided design for business? And that was the starting point when we launched business model generation. The ambition was really to put it out there, because people were downloading the PhD, reading it Like, wow, I didn't know PhDs were read by other people other than the dissertation committee and people were using the business model canvas that we put out there under a different name.

Speaker 2 9:42

It was called the business model ontology. So then when we did work on business model generation, we called it the business model canvas, and that's kind of when things took up on a different scale. You know that kind of curve, the hockey stick curve we definitely had that for business model canvas and now millions, literally millions of people use it throughout the world, which is very fascinating to see. We would have never expected that.

Speaker 1 10:08

Yes, and it sounds like you didn't have exactly the plan to make business model, like generation anthology canvas, into one of the core things that you'd be doing. So what were you doing at the time and how did that? Like you mentioned, people started using that. Did you then I don't know develop some consultancy model or some business courses and programs Like how did that journey go and what were you doing at that time as well?

Speaker 2 10:36

Like what were your? Maybe plan B as well? Yeah, so I never have a plan. I actually always have a plan B, but you know I always go for the plan A, however risky. I actually always have a plan B, but, you know, always go for the plan A, however risky.

Speaker 2 10:46

I think the motivation back then at the beginning was just to put something in people's hands that would help them do better work, and that's definitely what we've seen with the business model canvas. Again, we were not the first to put a concept out there, but I think we just went a level further in simplicity, rigor and that's why it got adopted. So a lot of people start to adopt this. We wrote the book Business Model Generation. Again, we put a lot of emphasis on visual, simple, practical, because that's what we wanted. We basically wrote a book that we would want that took off. And then, after you know the bestseller, when you know you have at the beginning thousands of copies, now millions of copies out there, you got to ask yourself what do you want to do? Do you want to become a consultant or an advisor? And I was always interested in software, since that kind of came out of my PhD, got interested a little bit more in the Bay Area, silicon Valley, or so didn't make the step to live there, to go there for a variety of reasons.

Speaker 2 11:52

But we then went down the path of software with Strategizer and, you know, not knowing anything then out of this kind of Swiss ecosystem not Silicon Valley ecosystem definitely made tons and tons of mistakes but always kept, you know, going and then creating new tools and always addressing the business challenges that we see unsolved, because I'm just fascinated by trying to put tools into people's hands so they can do a better job. So it's really driven by market needs. What are people struggling with? Can we help them with simple and practical tools?

Speaker 1 12:29

Yes, it seems like such a common I don't know thing common sense thing to do. But then at the same time many, especially business owners, entrepreneurs at the beginning, fall in love with the idea, first like this is the product, before thinking a little bit more through. So they're like does anyone need it? Does anyone else struggle with that? And I feel like also your second book, value Proposition Canvas, addresses that as well like figuring out right, is there a problem? And how can we figure out, like how, what's the best solution?

Value Proposition Development and Playbooks

Speaker 2 13:09

and so that was a very concrete reason why we came up with that book. So people use the business model canvas to work on products rather than the business model. So we realized, well, maybe there's a need for another tool, one that zooms into one aspect of the business model. How am I creating value for customers with my value proposition? So that tool didn't come out of. Oh, we want to create a tool. It came out of. Why are people, you know, using the business model kind of the wrong way? Well, because they have a challenge that is not solved the right way today. So they're using the wrong tool, but there is no other tool. So we created the value proposition canvas, which goes together with the business small canvas. Business small canvas is making explicit how you create, deliver and capture value.

Speaker 2 13:57

And the value proposition canvas is making explicit how you're creating value for customers, so it zooms in. You need both to make it succeed. And then you need the third piece, which is actually implementing your value proposition in business malls. So when you get these three things right which value propositions resonate with customers, which business malls can scale, and how do you actually scale and run a business it's a very hard part, probably the hardest.

Speaker 1 14:29

You know, when you get those three right, you're able to build a successful business. Yes, and you know, I myself, being on this solopreneur journey for quite a while, I can still relate that it's so much different to follow a process from when you just try to sort of shoot in the dark, hoping that something will stick. You know the process, even though it also might be slow and there might be failure and things might not work out. But with the good process you are getting closer and closer to the solution, Whereas when you just shoot in the dark, right, it's like, well, you might be shooting for your entire life.

Speaker 2 15:07

And that was actually what you're saying is super important, because that's what got us to pivot, you know, towards the right kind of business model that's software based. We didn't get that one right for a very long time, but now we're kind of relaunching some of that with playbooks. And playbooks is how do you apply these tools in the right way, step by step, with which process? So, you know, we put a lot of books out there so people learn. They still didn't do it right, even though we described the process, because it's not that easy. So just yesterday my sales team closed the deal, which was very interesting because the person said the CEO of a small company. He said, ah, this theory overload and all this learning, because he's been a fan of our books for a very long time. But then we launched these playbooks on our software platform so that you can go step by step. Yes, you learn some things, how does this concept work? But then you apply them to get outcomes, because at the end of the day, it's not about learning, it's not about process, it's about achieving those outcomes and those little wins until you get the right wins and all of that is applying. So you know, there's, I think, a lot of kind of learning fatigue out there process template fatigue. It's really about what do I need to do, step by step. So that's why we relaunched now with these playbooks and we're seeing a lot of success.

Speaker 2 16:36

Also, our playbooks were too big at the beginning so we realized, ah, hard for people to get in when you really listen to customers. We haven't always done this well. We tell others to do it, but then you know you got to do it yourself. Now we really, you know, are getting a lot better at this in terms of listening. And it's very simple when you listen you will hear. It's not about asking people what do you want, it's trying to figure out. What are they trying to get done? You create, you know solutions for that business, them all around it, and you'll succeed. So business at the end of the day, not that hard when you follow some basic principles. The hard thing is you don't get it right overnight. This is an experienced journey. You need to do it again and again and again. You learn again and again and again. It's like becoming a doctor. You can read all the books. You won't be a good doctor. You won't be a surgeon. It's both hand in hand.

Speaker 1 17:26

Yeah, it's probably why AI it's going to be a long journey before AI can replace doctors. It's like, with all the knowledge you know and speaking of AI, I think what's sort of downside of AI is it gives the impression you know that now you like know everything and people would share with me also the business owners, entrepreneurs that I know like. Oh, you know, I have this strategy, now I know everything. Like, and sometimes I fall for that as well. Yes, like, I have all the answers.

Speaker 2 17:54

Yeah, but here's the thing. So strategy is simple, like, uh, you know, business models, mapping out a business model, an idea that looks great, is simple. So what ai is really good at at and a friend of mine told me that I said this, I didn't remember With AI, you start from a place of edit. It helps you make very quick prototypes, for example a strategy, for example a business model, for example a value proposition. But then you need to iterate, and you can iterate with the help of AI, but at the end of the day, it's still going to be what do customers really care about?

AI's Impact on Business Fundamentals

Speaker 2 18:32

Ai will not tell you straightforward what it is. It'll get better at it. And AI will not tell you on its own how to run a company. It'll give you aspects of it. But it's by actually getting the real feedback from real people. Will it change the way we manage companies? For sure. So that's an exciting kind of thing that's going to happen, but I do believe for quite some time it's going to be a co-pilot. So it's a bit scary because sometimes the answers look so great. But then when you run a company, you know that those things are the easy things Adapting those things to the real world with real people. You know that's the hard part, but you know we'll see where AI brings us. I think there's a lot of unknowns.

Speaker 1 19:20

I read somewhere the phrase I think one of your newsletters that AI changed everything and nothing. Can you also maybe explain a little bit more on that, Especially in your work of business and innovation strategy? Where do you see, like, yeah, it's changed a lot of things, but also didn't in your work and company, how companies do things?

Speaker 2 19:42

So where it changes everything. Companies do things. So where it changes everything. So, if I just take innovation or strategy in terms of process is so much faster. Right the ideation you'll get 500 ideas rather than five, so it'll just boost the thing. Right, you can make a prototype within seconds. So we used to use this tool called value scenes, where you draw how you create value for customers. You do it with your hand or with stick figures and then you'd hire, maybe, a designer to make it look better so you can put it in front of real people. This today, you know you do with AI. You got the image within seconds. Yeah, it still takes minutes when we're talking about images, but that's super powerful. So it changes everything in terms of process and probably how we're going to organize.

Speaker 2 20:29

What it doesn't change are the fundamentals of business. What are the fundamentals? Create value for customers with a business model that resonates and then implement that in a sound way. So you got to execute and run and manage the business. So those fundamentals don't change Value for customers, value for your business and how do you scale and run a business. How we're going to do that changes, but the fundamental principles don't change. So it's interesting, you know, because again it changes everything and nothing. Nothing in the foundational principles of a business, but how we run it, how we're going to get there, how are we going to get towards creating value for customers, how are we actually going to run that business? Are we going to have a boss that's an AI agent? Could very well be. So the how will change, but the fundamentals of the what won't Value for customers, value for your business and you got to run and manage that business those things don't change. How we're going to do it very likely will be influenced in a fundamental way by AI.

Speaker 1 21:32

Yes, and speaking of how right you work with organizations that are really huge and one of the world's biggest, and then also with ventures that just starting out In terms of AI and strategy innovation, where do you see companies and smaller ventures like both of them get it wrong?

Speaker 2 21:54

Maybe not the wrong part to start with, but so one of the things that I'm thinking of I have to run a webinar on this kind of next week is you know what's the disruption risk for established companies when it comes to AI? And, surprisingly, some of the least you know tech, technology savvy companies will actually be least disrupted. So if you're a food company let's say you're Nestle, danone, whatever and you have this global distribution network retail into stores, into people's hands, guess what? That AI will not disrupt as easily Supply chain for sure. How we come up with new products for sure. But today, I still believe for the next couple of years, people will go to stores to buy food. Is there a fraction that's gonna, you know, get it delivered through AI? Well, you know, it's very similar to the internet. So, interestingly enough, for those aspects, food companies won't as easily be disrupted. Now what will happen is they won't see as much growth because you're going to see a lot of small brands launching products insanely quickly. So in food, in beauty products, all over those spaces, you're going to see small niche players get to a certain size. They won't disrupt completely and kill the large ones, but they will get to a size of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, which will eat into the growth of the large players. Because what you can do faster than ever before is test and iterate a product and get it into people's hands. What you can do faster than ever before is, you know, marketing tools with AI can allow an extremely small team to do incredible stuff. So that will get you very quickly to a certain size that will impact large companies it won't kill them. So it's in a phenomenal time for small companies, for startups, because you can do things you could never do before. Because AI is available to everybody. Gen AI, ai is easily accessible, which it wasn't before. It's an old thing, 70 years old, but it's only a few years with kind of open AI, making this popular, that it's at our fingertips. So that's going to change Now.

Speaker 2 24:21

Rambling quite a bit, but I'll get back to your question now, which is what are some people doing wrong is they're forgetting the fundamental principles and they put the technology at the center. So technology is just a means to an end and can AI help you do things you couldn't do before? You bet, let's say, you're a large company. You still need to have a leadership that embraces experimentation to test out new value propositions in business models. Otherwise, they will get killed by the corporate antibodies. So you still need to get those fundamentals right. How are you managing your company to allow the technology ideas or technology-based ideas to emerge?

Speaker 2 25:06

So I think the fundamentals is what people forget, are still there. Or again, ai is super exciting. We can do all these things Well. Is it creating value for customers? And can that business small scale? Or can it get killed tomorrow by another competitor? So we forget that. The fundamentals are still the things that you need to master and that's what we put in our playbook. So the fundamentals. But then how do you use AI to do those fundamentals better? We just launched a playbook and pre-launched, if I may say, because I'm working on it now is how do you use AI to craft better value propositions? Doesn't, you know, kill the fundamentals? You still need to understand the customer, you still need to have a solution that resonates, and what AI helps you do is get there faster and end up with a better result. But the fundamental principles are the same, so interesting stuff you know.

Speaker 1 25:59

Speaking of fundamental principles in AI, a couple of things you made me think about, a in terms of strategy, like the purpose of using AI in business is not to use more AI in business but to do something else right, like create more value, and yeah, so that's where I feel like the fundamentals that you're teaching with your work whether that's business model or a value proposition that's so important to get them right before you put AI on top of that, or I'd frame it a little bit differently.

Speaker 2 26:36

It's not on top. It's like when you're trying out new stuff with AI, use the principles to do that right. So it's not on top of getting the principles right first. It's using those principles to use AI in the best possible way. So again, like am I? You know there's this new thing I could do with AI, I can do it faster. Is this really addressing a fundamental job that customers have? Is it going to help them go faster? Fundamental job that customers have? Is it going to help them go faster, save money, whatever? So it's applying those principles to using AI. That's the way to probably frame it.

Speaker 1 27:13

Yes, Thank you for this correction. I must admit I'm not a business person yet, but thanks to your tools, I'm hoping to become one sooner than later.

Speaker 2 27:24

Oh, you will, you will. It's all about applying, practicing, iterating and learning.

Portfolio Approach to Innovation

Speaker 1 27:31

Yes, that's what also your work makes it look like it's something that I can master and apply and get better at, instead of again trying to just guess it. A couple of things that I wanted to touch upon which, yeah, I don't hear quite often from anywhere else, but your work is this portfolio-based innovation in companies, meaning your approach and advice to companies, to you know, run this mini innovation experiments in different teams and then having a process to evaluate what's actually working right. Can you describe it more in detail, like how bigger companies can apply it at scale?

Speaker 2 28:14

So it's actually very simple, and I use this talking to senior leaders all the time. You know, the company world is kind of split into two.

Speaker 2 28:22

running the business which we call exploit and inventing the future, which is which we call explore. Now, that is a spectrum and it's a continuum. So when you innovate within your core business, you're more on the exploit side. When you're trying out new business models, you're more on the explore side. So first you need to understand exploit, explore. Now, when you're running a business and let's say you're launching a new product, you still need to work in an iterative way, agile. So you're going to talk to customers, you're going to figure out, but since you're using the same channels, maybe the same supply chain, there's not that much risk and uncertainty, so you're probably going to get it right. So you think about it, you iterate, you make one bet to get one success customer segments, new value propositions, new revenue streams, entirely new business model, new supply chain. You have no idea if it's going to work. So their thinking is not going to reduce the risk and what happens is actually people apply in established companies, they apply the principles of exploit to explore. So they will think hard, they will analyze, they will make a market research kind of thing and you, you know, a business plan and then they'll invest and then later on the customers will say, well, we're not so interested. So generally they get some sales, but you know they won't get to where they need it to be. If you're Nestle, you know a new $10 million product is not going to cut it.

Speaker 2 29:55

So in Explore you create a portfolio of ideas. You get people started. You let teams start right away. Don't even try to ask yourself which idea is going to work, because you don't know. So you let teams start, but then you give them a short amount of time to give you one thing evidence that customers care Do they have. Don't ask them, oh, do you want this? Because they'll say, oh, what is this? I don't know if it's something new, but what you want to figure out is do they have the problem that you're actually solving with your idea? Do they struggle with that things? Do they have a budget to pay for those things?

Speaker 2 30:32

And then after a couple of weeks, you look at the evidence. Is there something there? Yes, you continue. You give the team more money to go into the next phase. Nothing there. You kill the project. So you reduce the risk. So what companies that are really good at innovation do extremely well, like Amazon? They have thousands of projects where people experiment and then they kill the projects very quickly. So you create you know portfolio is one but you create this funnel where you have a lot of teams starting. After a few weeks you kill maybe half or 70% of the projects and then you do the same thing until the best ideas emerge. And that's what established companies, small and large, have a hard time is investing small in a lot of things and then killing a lot of things. So what happens is a lot of companies have big projects with no evidence, but they've spent so much that they have a hard time killing the project. So there are many zombie projects out there that should be killed.

Speaker 1 31:36

It's this sunk cost fallacy that we have, which is fundamental human bias, cognitive bias, exactly exactly, yes, and you know, speaking of this like smaller path, I think where a lot of leaders have maybe troubles is A they feel like everything is urgent and right now, like in their core business, and they can't really spread their focus, so to speak, or they just don't know how to spread their focus, like dedicate maybe partial time or resources. Do you have any advice or formula for navigating this question?

Speaker 2 32:11

Well, yeah, the first thing I think you're absolutely right is I know some CEOs of extremely large and very successful companies who say you know, they don't say it publicly, but they will say in private they don't know how exploration works. Because nobody kind of made it simple to understand that running a company and innovating how it's different. We all intuitively know it was different. But if you don't say exactly how they're going to apply the rules of exploit to explore, so first thing is don't apply the rules of running a business to creating new businesses and innovation. So number one just understand that. Then number two is curiosity Okay, well then, how does exploration work? Once you understand that as a leader, then you have to make a strategic choice. I tell everybody you don't have to innovate, you know. If you, if you're growing like crazy and you don't think you're going to be disrupted, well, don't innovate, that's okay. But if you think that the world is changing and in five or ten years it's fundamentally different, then you're probably better off investing in exploration. But again, it's not either, or it's often an, and Nothing should get you away from focusing on running your business. You always need to put that first, otherwise you're going to die. You can't innovate yourself completely out of just the crisis, kind of. In most cases, sometimes it actually works. So then you make a strategic choice Okay, no, all I want to do is get more out of my core. That's okay as a strategic choice. And then you innovate within the core because there's tons of exploration you can do within the core. But again, if you just do that and the world is changing, you might just die with a dying business model. So you have to make that strategic choice. And these days, with AI, you really have to ask yourself am I going to be disrupted? And a lot of companies they will kind of admit they will explore, but they won't pull through.

Speaker 2 34:21

Where most companies fail is that they don't invest in the scaling phase. So they'll try a lot of things, they'll see things that are working, but they won't invest in the scaling phase. Because there's basically three phases in every business. If you simplify it down, it's exploration. You know, in a large company that might be from zero to a couple of million of dollars. And then you have scaling, which is from a couple of million dollars to 50, 500, a billion, whatever kind of the right size is, and then is running a business, whatever size again. So these are the three fundamental phases where most companies today are completely failing.

Speaker 2 35:01

It's not in the exploration they do a little bit of that, not always Many do. Where they fail is in the scaling. So what we really try to do is give those playbooks. How do you explore? That's a playbook and now, increasingly also, we're looking at the playbook to scale, because that's where we see a lot of companies failing. You got a couple of ideas that were proven in the market. Well, now scale it, because it's not because it's proven that it's going to grow on its own, because, remember, established companies have corporate antibodies that kill anything that looks differently. So you need to protect that business to scale it.

Speaker 1 35:37

Well, a couple of questions here. Why do you think companies fail at this scale stage? Maybe you know some fundamental reason that you noticed.

Why Companies Fail at Scaling Innovation

Speaker 2 35:45

Simple, super simple. It's super simple, like if you have a team of people running the divisions, well, guess what they're going to do? They're going to optimize their profit and loss to run the business. So that's what their job is. So you need to create explicit key performance indicators that help anything that looks differently to you know survive and thrive. I'll give you a silly example where even something that is a little bit different can easily die. So let's say you have a sales team and they're trimmed to sell. They get their bonuses based on quotas, etc. Then you give them a slightly different product. First thing is they have to learn how it works. The second thing, if it's a little bit different, they have to educate the customer, the client, as well. So it's already more difficult and maybe, if the margins are slightly different or there's not, as you know, a better bonus attached, they're not going to sell it. So this new thing, however customers might like it, could fall to the very bottom because it takes way too much effort from the sales team to sell this new product. So what you need to do as a CEO, then, or as a head of sales, is create the right incentives so that you know the sales team will put some energy into selling those new products, so that could already kill the product.

Speaker 2 37:08

Now think of that. That's what I call corporate antibodies. If you have a different business model, well it's in nobody's interest who's running the business, because they say, gee, like I need to run my business and now you're going to give me this thing. That's completely different. So if I'm selling, you know, a consumable and then you're trying to get me to sell a device, even if that would create recurring revenues, it's so different that you'd have to, you know, weave things into the business model. So anything that looks different gets killed by most corporations, unless the leadership team proactively protects those new things and helps them thrive.

Speaker 1 37:49

Yes, and what I'm hearing from you and correct me if I'm hearing wrong incentives is the key. Like, if you want people to prioritize a certain process, then you want it to be incentivized.

Speaker 2 38:01

Incentivized or, you know, just put the right things in place. So for people it could also be organizational structures, so it might not be incentives. You might say, no, no, I'm going to create a sales team just for that new product.

Speaker 1 38:17

So that doesn't have to do with incentives, you just created the right organizational structure to support that.

Speaker 2 38:23

So incentives is one. The other one is just create the right organizational structures to support that new thing, new product, new business, all new channels. And that's where I think companies fall short is they think, oh, we created that thing, customers want it. That should sell on its own. Well, it's a bit different. The organizational structure might just kill it. And I think that's where the awareness is missing. Over the summer, I did a workshop with the senior leadership team of a $40 billion company and we looked at four adjacencies and they had to map what's the synergy with the core business and what's the friction with the core business and then, based on that, they made a plan of of how to resolve this.

Speaker 1 39:05

That's the kind of stuff you need to do if you want innovation to succeed yeah, I feel like if you want anything to succeed, you need to do the same thing, right, you need to create the ecosystem to support the flourishing of this thing. Like, I don't know if somebody wants to do fitness or healthy eating, like they need to buy stuff and they need to create time in their schedule and trade, otherwise it won't work. So the same in companies. And yeah, and also you know what I'm hearing from leaders that I'm working with. They often try to like, for example, make people to adapt more, to adopt more ai, and they create no sort of playground for that to happen. No time and because everyone is busy already, like, like, why would I spend more?

Speaker 1 39:49

time, yes, exploring this thing, I think you know what you?

Speaker 2 39:54

you hit the the nail on the head. Because I like the fitness analogy, actually, in the sense that the excitement alone is not going to get you very far. It's the discipline, the repetitiveness and the structures you put in place. So if you have a peer group that's going to go work out with you or go run with you and you have it in your schedule, it's like silly stuff that kind of sounds boring. But the same goes with innovation. If you don't, you know, systematically, weave it in, create the support structures, create the discipline, it will not happen.

Speaker 2 40:32

The sheer willpower, like we know it from, like I can say I get excited at the beginning of the year, I'm going to go work out every day, I'm going to have a six pack, you know, at the end of February. And then I realized, well, okay, willpower might not be enough because I have a pretty busy life, but when you put the structures in place, the incentives et cetera, then it becomes a bit more seamless. It's never easy, but without relying on willpower, and that's what I don't like. Today in companies, a lot of leaders, they say everybody needs to be an innovator, and then gets people excited. But the structures haven't changed. So you'll get a spark. You might get one or two things, but you definitely won't be able to change it systematically. So fitness is a very good analogy there. It's not enough to be motivated and to want. You need the right structures and programs and playbooks right.

Speaker 1 41:23

Exactly the right systems in place. I have this, you know, saying that I put on my LinkedIn even knowledge without engagement won't stick, engagement without system won't last, and what it means is you might have like the most creative, innovative people but there is no system to support their efforts. It's going to die.

Speaker 2 41:45

You say something really interesting. So you know, I had this debate a couple of times where somebody told me you know, oh, it's all about people, and that's true. But how many companies do you know that you know, ran great people into the ground? And a good example that with the same people but with a different strategy and different system, you can actually have different results is Microsoft. So Steve Ballmer was a world class executor with a team of people he had. He grew the business over years but he missed out on every single innovation. Why? Because the focus was Windows and Microsoft Office, and that was it right. So the system was built for that. They had the world's probably one of the world's best research labs, but nothing came out of that because everything was killed.

Common Startup Mistakes to Avoid

Speaker 2 42:38

Then, at the end and to the credit of Steve Ballmer, like he put, you know, satcha Nadella in place. Then you have Satcha, who comes in with basically not all the same people, but a lot of the same people. If you take the size of the company and turns the company around and that was not by firing people and putting everybody else in place, but different strategy with different organizational structures and, in their case, even a different mindset. So it's actually pretty cool to read Satya's biography. He talks about like mindset. So that's a great example that the same people with the wrong structure you know it won't work. And that's the same for innovation. I don't believe any company has a people problem. If you have more than a thousand people, you have innovative people. In smaller companies you could debate, but when you have a thousand people, you have enough people who know what should be done. Give them the space and structure the system to execute the right innovation playbooks.

Speaker 1 43:36

Yes, and speaking of mindsets that you mentioned, what I also learned in my work is very often leaders think I need to change people's minds. And what I learned to believe just change the systems, people's minds will change Often often, often, or you will enable the people who already have that mindset shift.

Speaker 2 43:58

So the other thing that you know. I'll give you an anecdote. So I was doing a dinner with a leadership team of a company with around 10,000 people and their CEO. At the end I was just kind of educating the leadership team on innovation and growth and then at the end the CEO says, oh Alex, I get it, I get it. I need to infect everybody with the innovation virus. Well, not really. So. It was just in my head. I was like what did I do wrong? I told him what you really want is to create a transparent system where innovators can innovate.

Speaker 2 44:36

Not everybody has to be an innovator. Some people are world-class at execution and running the company. Do you want to help them understand what innovation is about so they can support it? Yes, Do you want them to become innovators? Probably not. You want them to run the company, but what you want is a place where innovators can go, and I'm not speaking physical place. We waste way too much money on innovation buildings. It's stinky notes on the wall. No, a process space, a cultural space where innovators can innovate. So I think it's often more about unlocking what's in people and, yes, sometimes you have to change mindsets. Of course the culture has to change, but you don't need to change everybody, and not everybody needs to become an innovator. So it's a lot there around systems and culture that can be done. That doesn't necessarily require changing everybody's minds and turning everybody into an innovator, because then nobody runs the company anymore.

Speaker 1 45:33

That's that's yes, so which is a different strokes for different folks, but what I mean is like we have every company has in in in terms of people, like different tools to work on different priorities, and so some people are better, you know, but solving certain problems, and maybe they should just do that exactly exactly, and then, at end, you build multidisciplinary teams, right?

Speaker 2 45:57

So people who are creative are one aspect of innovation. That's the easiest one. You do need people who you know can help us stick to a process. So you need a multidisciplinary team with different kinds of skills, and some will be closer to execution and scaling and some will be closer to you know, I'm good with ambiguity. I can talk to customers, I can try to figure out, I can see patterns. So it's all about these mixed teams.

Speaker 1 46:23

Yes. Again, to sum it up, what I'm hearing is everything the company needs to be doing. It has to have a place, time, resources and a process in this structure, like whether that's innovation or maintaining your core business in this structure like whether that's innovation or maintaining your core business. Another aspect of innovation, of structured innovation and business strategy I'd like to touch upon is I feel like what we were talking about just now was mostly about mature companies, established companies, and how about startups or ventures that are just starting out? Right, usually they are more innovative, like almost entirely, they're just innovating, trying things out, trying to figure out how it all works. Where do you see, having worked with them as well, they get it wrong or make mistakes or the process of innovation could be improved and also just developing their business.

Speaker 2 47:20

Yeah, I think it's very similar playbooks in the sense that you know, there's a playbook to figure out what customers you know, what are their job spains and gains. There's a playbook to figure out which value propositions resonate with them. Those are the same in established companies and a startup. Now what is going to be different is where you get the resources from. I actually think startups are way more focused on the right thing, because if you don't find customers who are willing to pay, you're going to die. You're going to run out of money Sooner or later. Right Now, there was a time where there was a little bit too much free money around. Maybe it might be the case in AI these days still, but if you run out of money, you're over. And in companies, I remember one senior executive told me that you know what? At our company, it's actually very hard to get resources, but once you have them, it's very hard to not get them anymore. So some of those projects will go on while you have no evidence, no customers, nobody paying.

Speaker 2 48:21

Again, because maybe we want to avoid failure. So the playbooks are the same, the system is a little bit different. I think what I still see a lot of startups get wrong is technology focus. So they get overly into. You know how. We need to make a prototype of the technology that works, because only if we have a technology prototype can we actually test things. That's absolutely wrong, the first thing you want to do.

Speaker 2 48:48

I talked to an entrepreneur earlier this week. First thing I said is have you really deeply understood the customer before investing in technology? Down to you know the ranking of the jobs, pains and gains? There's a lot more. In that case, that entrepreneur has actually done a lot of things right, but hasn't gone far enough in deeply understanding jobs, pains and gains.

Speaker 2 49:11

And then, even when you start with technology, it's iterative. You figure out what customers want, you try the technology oh, that's going to take me a year. You go back to customers. So it's iterative, it's not sequential. So biggest mistake, entrepreneurs they focus on technology and product too much, too early. And then the second one is they see it as sequential First market research, then product, then scaling. No, it's iterative. You'll go forward, you'll learn, you'll go backwards, you'll fail a ton. So I think this iterative process is crucial. And then listening to customers. Companies are not good enough, including Strategizer. We had some periods where we just believed too much in our vision and didn't really kind of test it rigorously enough, and sometimes we tested it enough and we still kind of went in the wrong direction. It's not easy, right.

Speaker 1 50:05

So, yeah, a couple of things that reminded me of a client of mine, an entrepreneur. They're in this like product figuring out or creating the best version of their product phase, and he was saying, oh, we just want to figure out the product first, to make the best thing out there, and then work on the rest of the stuff in a long-term strategy that's the best way to run out of money.

Speaker 2 50:31

That's absolutely the best way to run out of money. So don't go for the best version. Get people to adopt something and then you improve from there. And obviously not possible everywhere, right? When you're making medicine and you're making new drugs for in pharma, you can't go with a small thing.

Speaker 2 50:51

But another thing is so sometimes I remember working with a big credit card transaction company and they said, alex, we can't do prototypes because our transaction systems need to work and they cost millions and millions of dollars even a prototype. They said well, one reason more to rigorously figure out what the jobs, pains and gains of people are before you invest in expensive prototypes. So there's so much that can be done. People build too quickly and I kind of fear that AI is going to accelerate the build too quickly. Sometimes it's good to build faster because you make it concrete and people can see it, but often going down a completely wrong road. When you build something, you won't understand what customers really need. So I do think there's a huge space still for going deep, deep, deep on customer jobs, pains and gains and AI can help with that as well.

Speaker 1 51:46

Yeah, and it's also sometimes tricky, because sometimes people say one thing and then you test it and it doesn't work Always.

Speaker 2 51:55

It's not sometimes. So this is a different kind of thing that you know first time entrepreneurs. They think I'm following this playbook and then the lights are going to go on left and right and the path is going to be super clear. It's never clear in entrepreneurship and innovation. You always have contradicting evidence. The is, and that's what the best entrepreneurs do. They do see patterns in this mess of data and that's where I do believe AI will be able to help. We try to use more of that in pattern recognition. It's something humans are not really good at entrepreneurs better than others and I don't think AI will be able to do that for everything.

Speaker 2 52:37

But kind of detecting patterns in the mess is something that you need to just remind yourself. It's very rare that you'll have that very clear path. You know one out of a million startups is going to be like that become the next unicorn. Fine, you know OpenAI was able to do that when they launched their first kind of public mass market chat, but that's so rare. So you know people think of that. It won't happen. In 99% of cases you'll have contradicting evidence, but you'll get closer, so the light gets stronger the further you go down the right path. What can happen sometimes is you think you're on the right path. I remember us doing that with our first programs. The light got stronger and then it went black. So then you have to go all the way back and find a different path and see if that's the right path. The light gets stronger the closer you get to the right path, but there's always contradicting evidence.

Speaker 1 53:38

Yeah, and also, you know, things change all the time, now faster than ever. And speaking of that, I actually wanted to ask how do you suggest companies stay more adaptable and also listen better? I guess, in this era where things really like shift and change fast, you know what I hear often from leaders and entrepreneurs like well, we, we, we didn't know what to do anymore because we roll one thing out and in a week something changes, and so what do you do now? Like, yeah, go ahead that's the challenge, right.

Speaker 2 54:16

So you need to exploit and explore at the same time. So innovation is not a stunt. That's what sometimes people you know might still think in entrepreneurship or smaller companies. I find a product and then you know like I relax. The reality is it changes all the time. So we have to get comfortable with the fact that while we're running and executing and we can't neglect that again you have to run that piece. Even if you're small, you're going to have to figure out how can you explore at the same time, and I think you know the way to look at it is.

Defining Your Own Success Metrics

Speaker 2 54:53

Innovation doesn't necessarily require an R&D team and new technology. That is expensive Today. I think with AI, you can create really amazing things based on off-the-shelf software that's out there. They give you access. So you need to get comfortable with exploring and you need to get comfortable with cheap exploring while you're running a business. It's not easy. I'm speaking knowing that we're a small company and we explore and exploit at the same time. It's costly, but if you don't, you'll get stuck in your existing business model, which might die. So it's a strategic choice, but I think it's going to get harder and harder to only exploit. It's with the fundamental and rapid changes that are going on. I think you know, as a CEO, I try to experiment with AI. You know, trying all these things out helps you understand how to maybe embrace them a bit more.

Speaker 1 55:55

Yes, and I also feel like your work is more relevant than ever, and also in this like iterative fashion, meaning you don't just discover, you know value proposition once, you don't just figure out your business model. Once you are, you learn how to go through this process and hopefully you put it into some sort of automated system or process and you run it again and again and again.

Speaker 2 56:20

Yes, and I think that what I would emphasize is ask yourself what are the principles that don't change. You know, what made Amazon successful is they always followed a couple of principles, and one of the principles were you know that they focused on is people want to pay less, so that's never going to change.

Speaker 2 56:40

It's probably really rare, you know, unless you become a millionaire or billionaire. You want to pay less. You know that's. That's their core audience and as always been. That. That was a principle they, they said is not going to change. So, with all the change happening, some things will not change, and one is customers, jobs, pains and gains. You need to satisfy those, so you're going to have to listen. I think we're too much focused on technology. Why don't we focus more on what our customers really trying to get done, and then the solution becomes a bit more obvious. So there are fundamentals that don't change, and I think there are a couple of those in every industry. So it's very important to try to figure out what doesn't change within this sea of rapid change.

Speaker 1 57:30

Yes, and you know, speaking of Amazon and what doesn't change, what changes slower Amazon, for example, they lean into. One of the ideas is things delivered faster, and it plays into this fundamental human need to get the rewards faster right. The faster we get something, the happier we are, and that thing that is hardwired in our brain will probably not change forever, or at least for a very long time.

Speaker 2 58:04

Well, I'll give you an example of where we got it wrong actually twice. So first, at the beginning, I was troubled. I thought strategy is important.

Speaker 2 58:13

Right, strategy is important for companies Well yeah, but there's no instant gratification for companies Well yeah, but there's no instant gratification. So it turns out strategy is so long-term that people actually don't care that much on a daily basis, because you know what they're. You know 100 emails they got while being at a workshop concerns them more than the outcome of the workshop. Of course I'm, you know, black and white here. But so the same thing with innovation. What I realized, actually not too long ago, is innovation is a very difficult, difficult space, because it will pay off in a couple of years and then for most CEOs, they won't even be CEO anymore, so they don't care. That instant gratification thing.

Speaker 2 58:58

And then the recurring challenge is one thing you want to focus on. You know what are people struggling with every day. It doesn't need to be a huge pain Again, like all the emails you get. That's a constant pain. Is that your biggest pain in life? Probably not, but it's always there. So those are the things you know that hit you. So I think there's some of those where instant gratification will pay off much faster than the big, big, big thing where you think you're creating value but actually you know it doesn't.

Speaker 1 59:30

I think, like, as you said, the most difficult thing about innovation is that it doesn't have this instant gratification in most cases and, the worst of all, it might not even work the way you think. Exactly, there's no guarantee.

Speaker 2 59:45

And you know, that was when I realized I actually, you know, always said innovation is a hard space, and when I realized, well, why are we in a market that's so hard? It's arrogance almost saying we can make it work.

Speaker 2 1:00:01

It's a shitty market but we can make it work. That's very arrogant. Why not pivot to an easier market and make it work there? So there was a moment and I call this the expansion pivot. We still do innovation, of course, because we believe in it and there are companies who want to do it, but it's so hard as a market that if you rely on innovation, you're dead. So we went beyond and you know, we look at strategy, go to market and that's everywhere where our tools help. And that was a big insight. You know thinking like why are we staying in the difficult market? That's a pretty arrogant move.

Speaker 1 1:00:33

Yes. So do you kind of want to have this portfolio mindset as well? It's what I, but you kind of want to have this portfolio mindset as well, exactly, exactly, exactly, so you don't do all the most difficult things that might not work out. So, speaking of you know, maybe, vision and the future for strategizers, especially for your work, what are you most excited about and where do you see your company vision going on, moving forward?

Speaker 2 1:01:01

Well, what I'm most excited about is A. This expansion pivot towards themes that are very relevant to very large group of people. So go to market and we just had one client telling us I think it was last week you helped us go from 12 months to 12 weeks, wow, so we're helping them launch stuff a lot faster. It's the same tools that you use in innovation. Or we're launching a and this brings me kind of to the second topic that I'm super excited about are our playbooks. So I'm working now personally on a playbook on aligning product sales and marketing, so that you know they don't work into different directions.

Speaker 2 1:01:44

Or the playbook that got most traction, actually, that we're launching. We got some pre-sales, can buy it already at a discount, but we're launching it probably end of September, where we focus on creating or crafting great value propositions with Gen AI. So again, it's the same tools that you apply in innovation, but it's in a core execution space. How do I formulate my value proposition? And, rather than just doing another prompt engineering, I can do these prompts to come up with a great value proposition. It actually goes deeper how do I use AI to better understand customers? Once I understand customers, how do I use AI to test my value proposition and then you get to the crafting of.

Speaker 2 1:02:27

So these playbooks are definitely the one I'm super excited about and with the playbooks on our platform, we also make this a lot more accessible. So what we do in large companies so last week I run a wonderful workshop with the senior executives of a division of a large company. Now, that is not accessible to most people because I'm pretty expensive, but the playbook is the same. So what we're doing is we're making these playbooks accessible to anybody on the planet by putting them onto our platform. So I'm super excited about.

Speaker 2 1:03:02

You know, years ago said we want to democratize these tools, get them into hands of millions of people, which we did with the business small canvas, the value proposition canvas. But, as you said at the beginning, so now we're at the end right of our conversation the what you said is it's about the process of putting this in place, and that's what we do with playbooks we show people how to do it and do it. This is not about the learning, it's not about the process per se. It's about the outcome. We help them. Outcomes with playbook super exciting, and we're doing that hopefully for millions of people in the future, use our tools, but we want to give playbooks and get them to apply those playbooks yeah, it's.

Speaker 1 1:03:44

I'm also excited about the you know this like vision of all the playbooks. I'm such a fan of playbooks. I'm like this is the only way to do anything in life. Theory is very limited in real life, like knowledge, you know, is almost nothing without the implementation and having the process to do that. So, yeah, very excited about that. You know what made me think of I don't know if it's applicable or not, but like the subscription model where people can just, you know, constantly evolve with your company. So just something.

Speaker 2 1:04:16

I thought about oh, that's coming. Yeah, that's what we shifted towards already today. These are subscriptions you can buy. Today we haven't figured out the pricing for libraries, so you get a subscription to everything yet. But today we have a couple of people who already buy subscription to everything More in the enterprise space. We're going to make that accessible also in the other space.

Speaker 1 1:04:37

That's amazing.

Speaker 2 1:04:38

Because we continue to learn and share. So you're absolutely right, we're doing that, yeah yeah, it's cool.

Speaker 1 1:04:43

Excited to see that coming live. Also, as someone into visionary stuff and strategy for the future, I always ask my guests, like what success looks like for you, for strategizer, in, let's say, 10 years? Right, your wildest dreams and things you want to work out came true. What would it look like?

Speaker 2 1:05:08

So you know, shifting completely from a transactional revenue model to a recurring revenue model is something we haven't fully pulled off yet, and that's what I'm excited about. Number one, and then number two can we get the playbooks into as many hands as possible, from the largest companies that we're already serving with our consulting business all the way to new startups across the planet. So that's most exciting getting those playbooks into hands of people. What we're already starting is allowing others to put their playbooks onto our platform. So we're working with a big financial institution for their innovation teams, for their clients, to put playbooks onto our platform. So that's the next level of scaling, where we get others to democratize their knowledge on our platform. So those are the things I get excited about.

Speaker 1 1:06:02

That's amazing. Yeah, I guess sector by sector, so applicable to different industries and different scenarios.

Speaker 2 1:06:11

So look, I'm looking forward to the first HR playbooks.

Speaker 2 1:06:16

Amazing, they're not going to come from us. We're not the specialists, but I want to be able to acquire maybe a Mercer or so, not as a company but as a client, to put their playbooks onto our platform. I think too few consultancies yet think playbook. They either educate or they consult, but they don't enable others with playbooks. So playbooks are, you know, sheer enablement. So that's what I believe in. I actually, you know, hope that this is going to disrupt a lot of consultancies, because the playbooks allow people to do it on their own.

Speaker 1 1:06:49

Yeah, that's what actually what I'm also passionate about. When I teach my stuff in concept, I'm like how can I make myself obsolete by giving people tools to do it on their own?

Speaker 2 1:07:00

That's the ultimate success, right? So the way I see it is, I've succeeded, personally, when I'm irrelevant, completely irrelevant Maybe I already am and I'm just delusional, but, you know, when strategizer doesn't need me per se and the world doesn't need my thinking or our thinking. So that's what we're trying to move towards. When we go into a company today, we already work towards, you know, the Independence Day, if you want, yeah, we can coach you, but we want you to become autonomous. Here are the playbooks on our platform and with those playbooks they become autonomous. So we self-disrupt to a certain extent and with the playbooks we're disrupting our consulting business. Absolutely fine, because that's the shift I want to, I want to make yes, and you know here a couple of thoughts.

Speaker 1 1:07:47

Thoughts occur to me. Is that a when you disrupt yourself and make yourself absolute in one thing, it means that you can now grow into something else and not being stuck in that older thing that you have to do over and over and over again. Yeah, and I think for creative person it's such a actually joy to like yeah, I created this, it's useful.

Speaker 1 1:08:06

Now I can do something else yes, exactly exactly and and the same, you know, for my coaching clients. I thought to myself like when I work with someone, my ideal outcome is for them to go through this process, build the skills and never come back to me for that thing ever again. There you go.

Speaker 2 1:08:23

Exactly that's what we're trying to do.

Speaker 1 1:08:25

Yes, and you know. Speaking of ideas and creativity, I think one of the last questions I wanted to ask where is your source, maybe, of your creative ideas and new things that you come up with? Do you have any hobbies? I don't know music, sports, something else you're passionate about?

Speaker 2 1:08:47

So the source of creativity comes from. You know, watching clients struggling with certain things. Now, where I kind of get to think about those things is, you know, where I go to do my thinking and reflection is just in beautiful natural places. I love the mountains so I tend to hang out in the mountains. You know, summer and winter I really like that Long hikes, crazy hikes or crazy ski tours. That's where I get, you know, the inspiration per se. The seeds come from, from the curiosity watching people with business challenges. Where they kind of mature is in the mountains. So when we worked on some of these books that you can see behind me with Eve, we went, you know, to a couple of retreats, in particular for the Invincible Company. We probably did about 15 retreats and 12 were to the mountains. So the mountains are definitely a space where my thinking matures.

Speaker 1 1:09:48

Yeah, and I just wanted to actually ask you this question because what I also believe a lot of leaders and companies get this part of innovation or creativity a little bit wrong, in terms of they also try to run it on a deadline or in some sort of sprint, which doesn't always allow for the thinking space, the space where you just process stuff without having to come up with the result right away.

Speaker 2 1:10:17

Right and well at least, yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 2 1:10:22

Hesitating, you know, like in the sense that I like deadlines, but it's not that you can't have guaranteed results. So you can't say, oh you know, show me, I need that customer evidence next Friday. What you say is, well, show me the what've learned until next Friday and then they'll have evidence or not. So I believe in tight deadlines and then killing projects or not. So I actually believe in that. And one of the things I say when it comes to innovation is any head of innovation, chief of strategy or growth officer that's tasked with innovation, if they can't show return on investment, they should get fired. So at the end of the day, you need to produce results.

Speaker 2 1:11:03

So I think holding innovators accountable is extremely important, holding them to deadlines extremely important, but in a different way than an exploit. So where I join you and that's probably where this is what you mean is deadlines in the exploit sense, absolutely not. But deadlines, you know, in exploration you got to run three experiments the next two weeks. That's a deadline. Yeah, what's going to come out of those? We don't know. So I am a big fan of deadlines and return on investment, but in a very different way than in the exploit part of the business.

Speaker 1 1:11:38

Yeah, I think what I also meant more on a personal level for leaders to emphasize to people that people do need this time, like your time in the mountains, or people doing their hobbies for their brain to process stuff, not just, you know, doing the work all the time 100%, 100%, I think the whole.

Speaker 2 1:11:55

You know what kind of workspace do you want to create? But I also don't believe in dogma. I think people will go to the companies that correspond most to the culture they're looking for. So some people don't want that. They do want to sleep at the office. You know, beside Elon Musk and the supply chain. Don't be my guest, be his guest. So some people want that, and that's okay. So I think we shouldn't generalize. I think what we should do as leaders is make the culture of our company explicit and attract people who correspond to that culture. So I think that's key. Not everybody, you know. Even when Shoya with Patagonia said, let my people go surfing, that's not everybody's thing, but at that company that was definitely a thing, and you know that company is organized differently. That's not everybody's piece of cake. So I'm not into dogma in this case at all. I think we need to create a transparent culture and then invite the people with the right culture to come to those companies.

Speaker 1 1:12:59

Yeah, and also everyone probably should know how they work the best Exactly.

Speaker 2 1:13:04

That's not everybody does Right. So you need to know the culture you want and then join a company that has that kind of culture. I think that's a big theme for the next couple of years, and I think a lot of people are maybe questioning themselves and what they're doing, because they haven't listened enough to themselves and they're at a workplace where the culture doesn't correspond to their way of working, their beliefs, and not everybody has the luxury to do that. So let's be honest, we're pretty lucky, or we made a choice to be in that situation, and sometimes that comes with certain downsides. Being an entrepreneur it's a lot of fun stuff, but man, it's a roller coaster right?

Speaker 1 1:13:47

Yes, Well, on that note of knowing yourself and doing the right company to do your great work and innovate into the future, I'd like to sum up our episode, and the last question is well, maybe a couple of more questions. One question is is there a question that I didn't ask you, but you wished I did, so you could share some value or insight with our listeners?

Speaker 2 1:14:14

There's maybe two. One is you know what is success for a company and what is success for me as an entrepreneur? I think the first one companies. In general, you know they need to make explicit what success looks like, but I think increasingly companies should look at success for their team members, their employees and society as well, not because it's the right, just because it's the right thing to do, but because that's how you're going to attract some of the best talent. And then, you know, I invite everybody to ask themselves what does success look like for them? So it might be, oh, you know, like I just want the big wallet or be on the cover of a magazine. That's okay, no value judgment. For me that's not the case, and maybe there were years where that was more the case.

Speaker 2 1:15:01

Figure out, what does success mean for you? For me, the big thing is to continue the relationship with my kids. So I just hired my son into Strategizer, because it's one thing that allows me to spend more time with him, and obviously, if he doesn't like it, well, I tried, but so far so good. So that's part of what I define as success the relationship that I can have with my children. So you know, I think we just need to define what matters to us, not to others, or what often is characterized as success. So I listened to this. Is this anecdote. Now I'll stop there and we come to a good end. I don't remember who said that, but I was watching a thing. It was a. It was a podcast by stephen bartlett and one of the one of the participants was saying you know, oh, it was actually. I remember it was a Noah.

Speaker 1 1:15:58

He was saying yeah, from South Africa.

Speaker 2 1:16:00

Yeah, the comedian, and he was saying, with Swiss roots, I may say he was saying why do we read about these super successful musicians or, you know, Hollywood stars that die alone in their bathtub, Like in all places, you know why? Alone in their bathtub, and everybody you know, or like, I mean I'd say everybody, but it sounds like that's the success. They're famous, they're rich, and it is a stereotype of, yeah, and then they die in their bathtub, but but think of it, you know, they don't die on the dance floor. We don't read that a lot. So I think defining what success is for you and then living up to that standard, to your own personal standard of success, that's the only thing that matters. Don't define your success by the external world, because you'll never get there. There's always the next thing. But when you're at peace with what success is for you, then I think it's a bit easier.

Speaker 1 1:17:04

Anyway, a lot of blah blah, but it's been a topic that I've been kind of thinking of for the last couple of days. Well, I just would like to add to that. I wrote a short blog just a couple of days ago and the title was every success metric is wrong except one, and the one was the one that you create for yourself.

Speaker 2 1:17:20

Yes, love it Awesome, great framing, great framing.

Speaker 1 1:17:24

Yes, and that's so like I didn't know we would go there. But that is so important, I believe. Whether you lead company or you lead yourself, or in building your life, it's so important to understand, like what's your exit strategy in terms of like what success is for you, and then optimize your life, work, company, for that. So thank you for that note at the end and, alex, so we could be talking about everything for strategy, innovation and also your books for kids on strategy and business for like another couple of hours. You are so generous in terms of your work and everything that you produce, but, yeah, we have time limit. So where should listeners go to explore more of your work, to learn about Strategizer, about Alexia? Where would you send our listeners?

Key Takeaways and Resources

Speaker 2 1:18:18

Just go to strategizercom. You'll find a lot on our playbooks. You can follow me on LinkedIn. Alex Osterwalder and I always write about my latest thoughts and the stuff that we do at Strategizer, so those are the two places where you'll always get the fresh stuff that we're working on.

Speaker 1 1:18:36

Yeah, it's amazing. So we're going to link that in the show notes. And maybe if people were to pick up, let's say, business people were to pick up one of the books or I don't know courses like what, would that be? Where would you like people to start?

Speaker 2 1:18:50

Yeah, go to our website and pick the playbook of your choice. Okay, I think that's where I would send people is. We're launching a couple of really wonderful playbooks based on everything we've learned in the field packaging them so that people get outcomes. There's no time to learn, but there's time to get stuff done.

Speaker 1 1:19:09

Yeah, that's amazing. So, listeners, please do go to the website that is linked in the show notes and follow Alex's work on LinkedIn as well. And, alex, thank you so much for being such an amazing guest and for all your work. Yeah, thank you so much, feeling extremely grateful. Wonderful conversation, wonderful, thank you.