What's Up with Tech?

Design, Disruption, And The Next Wave

• Evan Kirstel

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Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com

Most companies call it innovation when they add a feature. Real disruption is when you build the thing that makes the old one irrelevant.

That’s where this conversation starts. JJ de la Torre, founder and CEO of **Raven**, joins us to talk about what leaders consistently get wrong about digitalization, transformation, and “innovation theater”—and how to re-anchor teams around revenue and outcomes instead of decks and demos.

We dig into why the classic services model keeps breaking down. Strategy writes slides. Product ships features. Marketing wins awards. No one owns the result. JJ walks through Raven’s end-to-end model where think, build, and sell operate as a single accountable system. It sounds obvious. It’s not. That shift rewires how ideas get vetted, how products are built, and how success is measured.

Then we tackle AI—minus the hype. The real opportunity isn’t cost cutting. It’s redesigning the business model. Where can AI remove an entire step in the value chain? Enable performance-based pricing? Create revenue streams that didn’t exist last year? If AI isn’t changing how you make money, it’s just a faster expense line.

At the core of the conversation is design as a discipline for transformation. JJ’s book, **Transformation Designed**, frames design as a blueprint for results: center on the customer, validate with behavior, and turn insight into something teams can actually ship. We talk about why design-led companies outperform, how to avoid CES-style “innovation” nobody needs, and the hardest move of all—detachment. Killing today’s winner to create tomorrow’s business, the way Apple let the iPhone eclipse the iPod.

We wrap with what’s next for Raven: co-investment and variable models that share risk and upside with clients across the US, Europe, and Latin America. If you’re planning a 2026 reorg, here’s the gut check: does it change what you build, how you sell it, and how you get paid? If not, you’re just rearranging furniture.

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SPEAKER_01:

Hey everyone, really excited to chat about innovation and disruption and change with someone who's been in the digital trenches for a couple of decades. JJ, how are you?

SPEAKER_00:

Very good, and you, and thanks for the invite, even.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, thanks for being here. Really intrigued by what you and your team are up to at Raven. Um, maybe introduce yourself, the team, the mission, and the journey to the audience today.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. So my name is JJ Del Torre. I'm the CEO and founder of Raven. Raven is one of the few companies around the world to solely specialize on business disruption and acceleration. What means that is like we help like high grow or scale up companies to actually achieve new revenue, achieve new growth using disruption as a methodology, disruption as a tool, and disruption as a way to actually create disruption on their own business.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, you make it sound so straightforward. Of course, there's a lot of complexity there. It is not. And it's uh a much overused term, perhaps digital transformation. But to tell you what's the mix in terms of people and business and tech, how do we get, or how do you see getting transformation right?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, maybe as you said, maybe we can start with some definitions, you know, because usually people mix and confuse between digitalization, transformation, and disruption. So maybe just to clear the air between our listeners or like what is what is what in in these domains. Digitalization refers when you have a process and basically you use technology to make it more efficient. So imagine you know, opening a bank account and suddenly instead of actually filling, you know, kind of like a new uh a new paper sheet or a PDF, now you are actually completing some of that process or the entire process through some digital component. It can be an online form, it can be an app, it can be anything. That basically what it does, it doesn't change the process, but it makes it more efficient. I can do more with less. Then it comes transformation, whereas if we use the analogy of a transformer, it's like you have uh a robot that is a car that then gets transformed into a robot, a standing robot. And if you if you look very careful, you can trace each of the parts of the ending robot to the original car. It is a different component, it's a different body, it's a different, have a different functionality, but still you can try trace everything that is on the end result to the original form. So it's a transformation, and then you have disruption. Disruption basically means you know, kind of like you're going to be evolving to something that cannot be traceable to the original form, which means, in other words, in other words, it's like you're changing, you know, the process, you're questioning the process, you're actually maybe even kind of like removing completely an entire process to end up with something that is completely different and with most of the time has a different value composition, a different value chain, and a different business model than the original form.

SPEAKER_01:

That's a great point there. And maybe talk a little more about Raven. You've been a very successful enterprise. How do you align technology and data and culture to drive uh growth? What's been your success uh so far?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so so I think like, first of all, like we we operate integrating capabilities that usually doesn't exist. So uh a big problem that you know the services industry has is like you have people that think and they produce PowerPoint, then you have people that build and they chip products, and then you have people that actually uh sell products, which actually they deliver you know advertisement and basically ads. And these three groups don't talk much, these three three groups don't integrate. And uh effectively, if you think what are the key metrics that each of them are kind of like handling, none of them really relates or connects with the metric that the business is looking at. A business is looking for revenue, for growth, the guys that deliver PowerPoint, they give you a plan, but they're not accountable for the execution. And most of the time they said that it was your poor execution that didn't deliver the plan. The people that actually do or build things, they sell you kind of like sell, they sell you kind of like capabilities, they sell you kind of you know staff augmentation, they sell you people. So effectively they're a factory that will build whatever you're chipping in without actually taking care if they if what they're building actually is going to have a market or is going to be consumed, but they will chip something, and then the people that are at the end that are the ones that are selling, supposedly selling, they will focus and concentrate the efforts in having a great advertisement, helping you to win awards like Effie Awards and this sort of award, helping you to actually be on the billboard, you know, be in the super bowl, and things that actually will make you very proud, but they will not commit to actually generate revenues. So it's a big misalignment in terms of what you are looking as a business owner or as a business manager to what the services industry is delivering. This is where Raven comes in with a complete end-to-end approach that encompasses everything and integrates everything. So, what are the capabilities that we have? Everything that you need to actually think something and sell something, from business designer strategies to actually kind of like developers, architects, DevOps people, content creators, content animators, marketeers, growth hackers, etc. So everything that you need from ideation to actually putting something in the market. And this is why you know we we we try to say, you know, we think to build, we build to sell, and therefore we think to sell.

SPEAKER_01:

Brilliant. Well, I I worked for a company like yours maybe 30 years ago. It was a very interesting time in my career. Cambridge Consultants, it was called, uh, doesn't really exist in the same fashion anymore. It's part of one of the big 20 consultancies. And um despite all the AI hype, you know, whether you believe it's real or practical or uh a bit early, all of the big consulting companies have been hit very hard in terms of their stock prices, their projects, their revenue. Many, even the great uh McKinsey is is downsizing. What's behind that? What's behind the scenes, do you think, as a services company? Do they just get way ahead of their skis and throwing people at problems?

SPEAKER_00:

I I think what's happening is like the the model is broken, as I just explained. You know, like the the bigger, the the biggest consulting companies, they thought for years that just because they throw smart people into problems, they would get the answers right. And you know, what has been demonstrating one time after another time is like you know, smart people without relevant experience and without like market sensitivity might not create the best execution, you know, strategy or the best advice for a company, you know, and and and this has been proven. The same happened with the built side, and the same will happen with the sell side. So again, you know, it's not because you put smart people that you're going to get a smart answer or an answer that is going to move the needle for your company. Uh and AI is one of those examples, you know. Most companies think that because they are just throwing AI, things are going to get cheaper or going to get better. And it's not like that. You know, we're looking at AI from a different perspective. When everyone is talking about you know, reducing costs and using AI to make things more affordable, we're thinking about how AI can actually change the business model of a company, how you can use AI to build the next generation of revenue for a company. So we're not using AI or looking for AI on an isolated fashion, is like saying, okay, how much I can reduce if I use AI to do development, to do advertisement, or even to do kind of like a PowerPoint presentation, but rather like the focus is like how AI can change my business plan or my business model.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, well said. And so as we uh dive deeper into automation and AI and every everything from coding to design to marketing, I mean, what uh human skills still matter the most, both for individual contributors and leaders?

SPEAKER_00:

So so I think human skills, uh which might might look very fancy or or kind of like some rhetoric, but effectively what will happen is like you know, the only thing so far that AI is not going to be able to imitate is you know what you and me are doing right now, you know, having a conversation, a human conversation. Probably if we load you know your experience and my experience, and we get two kind of like uh AIs that to talk, probably they will do a some an uh uh byproduct that is going to be quite nice. But really, this level of interaction, and if we connect that with physical interaction, like going to a physical store, having a coffee, having a chat, this is what is going to be uh irreplaceable, at least for the short, short term, midterm. Uh for that midterm and short term, anything that reconnects humans, I think is going to be extremely valuable and it's going to be an asset that company companies need to look how to create, how to develop, and how to preserve. And that's beyond automation, that's beyond actually cost reduction, that's beyond, you know, kind of like some optimization or or or some kind of like improvement in the daily task that you're doing. That's about reconnecting, you know, humans in in our most basic fashion. That is just you know getting to know each other, throwing empathy to each other and trying to solve problems together.

SPEAKER_01:

Brilliant. And you wrote a book, um, Transformation Designed. What was the uh big idea behind the book? What were you trying to achieve? Uh give us some of the themes and also where can we buy it?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, so so first of all, you can buy it at Amazon or any kind of like massive public store. Like so, so it's it's out there. We launched it in August as uh uh received amazing reviews. You know, we're third kind of like in in kind of like the one of the kind of global books, uh associations that ranks books and newly published books, and especially non-fiction books. Uh so the book is doing pretty well, and the book turns uh something that we we see and we experience on a daily basis, that is design, into something that we can understand and we can use to create transformation. So in our daily life, we employ, we we use and we basically leverage design in every single thing that we do. You know, absolutely every every single thing that we're doing is actually kind of like it has some some sort of the of design underneath. You know, you talk about this this chat that we're using, you talk about your phone, you talk about the spoon that you're using, the glass, anything that we're using has been designed. And what the book does is basically talks about you know how design can be done with purpose and how actually you can leverage design to generate transformation. So, in other words, how you can create a transformation plan that can be designed in a way that actually is going to deliver results. And the book is also very handy because it's offering you a guide on how to take basically ideas into a blueprint that you can apply to your business, to your role, to your ideas to actually generate kind of like a path of transformation that can be designed and therefore can be executed. And last but not least, you know, I kind of draw into the likes of you know IKEA, Walmart, Disney, that are very successful companies that have used design to infuse transformation or of their business models as examples of how actually you can apply this blueprint to something that it's real and has been delivered with tangible results.

SPEAKER_01:

Brilliant. So I'm gonna be heading to the Consumer Electronics Show, the big get together globally in Las Vegas. And everyone's gonna be talking to about innovation, but 98% of the products there are probably not very innovative. So there are a lot of companies that are talking innovation, but not really disrupting. What's what separates companies that like to market and talk from those who actually do?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I think that it it comes from something that is very obvious, but I would say 99% of the companies don't do, which actually is you know standing in the face of your customer, understanding your customer for real and designing for your customers and not from inside out. You know, it has been proven that uh companies that focus on design has an ROI that it's exceed 200%. Um whereas eight out of ten projects that don't have a design component means have not put the customer at the center of the problem that they are solving. Therefore, they're coming from some hypothesis from you know a manager or a bureaucrat or someone that is sitting at the company thinking on what the customer really wants, but without any actual insight, eight out of ten of those projects will fail. So it's super demonstrated, and this is not something from now, this is something demonstrated in the 80s when IBM started IBM design on the 90s, on the on the 2000s. You know, it has been super well documented. It's how design, meaning putting at the center of your value proposition an actual problem that comes from a user, and then solving against that problem and against that user will deliver better results than actually just you know someone that is come up with an idea of something that can be developed and can be shipped. And so this is the main headline. It's something that, again, it's it's for me very obvious. Uh, it's very obvious for you know the thousands of thousands of designers that have been trying to pave their way into large corporations and trying to advise CEOs and CXOs on the importance of design. Again, not understanding design as the an aesthetic component, like how we feel things or how we we perceive things, but what is the intention that is behind something?

SPEAKER_01:

Great point. So we're headed into uh uh 2026 in a few days. Um, and then everyone at most companies begins thinking about re-orgs and you know, re you know, uh flattening flattening the organization or streamlining or maybe downsizing. I mean, these are all uh things that companies think about, particularly the beginning of the year, but many of them really don't embrace change in a meaningful way. You know, they're just sort of shuffling the seats and uh around the boardroom. Any advice for for making meaningful change, meaningful transformations in a company that's maybe maybe stayed and and kind of uh quiet and maybe adverse to change or or transformation?

SPEAKER_00:

I think any evolution requires a detachment. Uh and the more successful you have been, the most difficult is to actually infer, prepare, and develop the next wave of evolution that you're going to have. And that detachment requires sometimes you know, throwing out of the window, you know, something that has been your business as usual, something that has been a big cash generation or a big you know core business of your company to actually embrace something new. Uh, you know, I love what Steve Jobs did at Apple, you know, when they have the the iPod, and you know, iPod was the the star project product from from Apple. And then suddenly he introduced the iPhone, which effectively in six months actually killed the entire category of the iPod. Uh, everyone thought that it was crazy that he was actually throwing things for free, that was no intention and no rational to do it, but he saw something different, and I think that was a transformation you know of the entire core core business of Apple uh into a new category. I think that's an amazing example of detachment that a company can can do. And to remind us of this, there is a book that uh I really like that is called How the Mighty Falls, and that tells us the stories about Blackberry, you know, Kodak, uh Bloodbuster, all these guys that they were, you know, kind of like the main player in their category for years. And effectively the story tells exactly the same for every single one. You know, none of them was able to actually see the downfall that was coming. And when they were able to actually perceive it, it was already too late, and it was not a matter of changing the trajectory. None of them tried to change it, all of them tried to slow it down, which also showed us kind of like a problem. And I think companies need to identify very clearly what's happened with their core business, what's gonna happen with their business model. And if you perceive that it's going to start, you know, reducing in terms of their velocity, you need to start making changes.

SPEAKER_01:

Great advice. Um, so for people listening, what are you up to in the new year? What what initiatives, plans, events, what what's on your mind at Raven? It's by the way, for viewers, it's raven.inc, INC. Correct. But yeah, what are you planning for uh next quarter?

SPEAKER_00:

So so for us is uh pretty much you know uh eating our own medicine. You know, we need to continue changing, we need to get continue evolving, and our business model is always evolving. You know, a few months ago we start, you know, we're like a year ago we were only doing services, then we started with SaaS, then we started with variable, now we're doing co-investment with our clients. And next year is going to be a year that we're going to be pushing very hard on co-investment and variables, which means that you know, the ideas and the concepts that we want to take to the market, we want to invest in those things with our clients, and we want to fully commit with them with 100% viable into the outcomes that we're trying to predict. So that's a big change in our business model. I know that other services companies are not doing it, so also it's a it's a way that will need to be somehow, you know, kind of like paving the way to probably what the future of services is going to be, and and you know, uh partnering with with the cloud, the type of clients and customers that really want to explore that that area.

SPEAKER_01:

Brilliant. And you you have operations in South America where you are now, and Madrid, in the US.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Our headquarters is in Spain, and we have offices in in Berlin, in the US, in Mexico, in Buenos Aires, in Colombia, and in Chile, where I'm right now.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, it's about 20 degrees Fahrenheit here in Boston today. So I'm looking forward to a road trip. Maybe I'll see you at one of your uh warmer locations. Thanks so much, JJ, for joining and sharing the vision and the um And thanks a lot for your time. Thank you. And thanks everyone for listening, watching. Also check out our TV show, Tech Impact.tv on Bloomberg and Fox Business. Thanks everyone. Thanks, JJ.