In this episode, we explore what a product-centric organization looks like, with our guest Craig Strong. Sharing his experience as a Global Practice Leader at AWS (Amazon Web Services) and seasoned Chief Technology & Product Officer, he helps us dive deeper into the nuances of adopting organizational designs, cultures, and practices that cater to product-customer centricity. 

A true product operating model specialist, he has helped countless startups and enterprises modernize and evolve to become more customer-centric. From bio-mimicry to hands-on experience, learn what inspires him every day to design some of the most robust and adopted organization structures in the world. This podcast is just not one to miss!

In this insightful episode, Craig Strong, co-author of "The Lean Product Lifecycle," explores the future of product-centric organizations. With over 18 years in the tech industry, Craig has worked with startups, SMEs, and global enterprises, guiding them through growth and transformation.

Craig shares profound insights on this podcast, emphasizing the importance of life cycles in product development and the dangers of prescribing defined frameworks. We dive into the significance of asking timely questions, what questions to ask, and the necessity of flexible frameworks that cater to the emergent needs of complex organizations. He touches upon his concept of viewing taxonomies and ontologies as products, and so much more. 

As a Forbes Technology Council member and co-author of "The Lean Product Lifecycle," Craig provides a blend of theoretical and practical insights on this podcast. This episode is a must-listen for those seeking clarity and inspiration in product operations and organizational design. Tune in for a highly engaging discussion with Craig Strong!

Key Highlights
👉 Importance of timely contextualization, innovation, and autonomy in ideas.
👉 Relevance of incremental governance.
👉 Removal of “Rigidity of Frameworks.”
👉 Creating a balance between heuristics and cultural tenets of an organization.
👉 Complete breakdown of product taxonomies - its necessity, importance, design structure, etc.
👉 How to build collective intelligence in organizations.
👉 How to use visualization tools for imagining and executing dynamic organization design.

Topics / chapters
(00:00) Intro - Product-Centric Organizations (Portfolios, Taxonomies)
(00:57) Introducing Craig Strong
(07:12) Key Tenets and Artifacts of Product-Centric Organizations
(12:31) Incremental Governance
(15:51) All about Product Taxonomies
(19:17) Patterns in Taxonomies
(21:06) Dynamism and Complexity in Organizations
(23:17) Scalability of Taxonomy
(26:55) Alternatives to P&L in Product Development Cycle
(29:11) Objectivity and Removing Bias in Development
(32:18) Innovation Theatre and Operationalizing Product Innovation
(36:20) Skin in the Game
(38:54) Hierarchy of Taxonomies
(43:03) Building a Taxonomy and Ontology that is Convenient
(50:49) Breadcrumbs and Suggestions by Craig
(53:38) Closing Points

Remember that you can always find transcripts and key highlights of the episode on our website: https://boundaryless.io/podcast/craig-strong

Episode recorded on September 18, 2023.

Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at https://boundaryless.io/resources/podcast

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• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/boundaryless-pdt-3eo

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Music from Liosound / Walter Mobilio. Find his portfolio here: https://blss.io/Podcast-Music

In our first episode this season, we dive into the world of open platforms and the future of organizing. With his thought-provoking presentation of “Gardening Platforms,” our guest Alex Komoroske helps create a shift in mindset towards a more achievable and sustainable approach in creating impactful technology solutions. We explore his key learnings from leading products at Google Chrome and how he continues to implement these in his own journey today. Touching on questions of morality, control, and designing for the nefarious users, there’s so much Alex offers in this podcast, and we hope you take from it as much as we did.

Alex Komoroske is truly an inspiration when we think of the potential that powerful technology solutions can create. For 13 years, he worked with Google, building some of the most cherished products that came from the organization. Heading product for a company that affects billions of lives is no easy feat, and Alex did just that for Google Chrome. He took his vast ocean of knowledge, and for the last two years has helped shape Stripe as their Head of Strategy. In his flip-book style presentation, aptly titled, “Gardening Platforms,” he discusses the fundamental emergent power dynamics of platforms, how to evolve an existing platform to continuously improve it, and how to create a new platform from scratch. This got us truly hooked, and we are glad that Alex joined us to discuss this and many more mind-tinkering concepts in our podcast. We touch upon the inherently complex and evolutionary nature of platforms, the role of composability and modularity, and what it means to be sensitive to the socio-technical implications of your solutions.

Get ready to be inspired by his high-impact journey, brutal honesty, and some remarkable recommendations of books and concepts that have shaped his thoughts and processes.

Key Highlights
👉 Platforms can be imagined as a swarm of energy, between multiple entities interacting with one another.
👉 Why you don’t always need a big-bang for product launches; oftentimes, self-accumulating users are what’s best for the platform’s success.
👉 Why a gardener mindset, rather than a builder mindset, is poised to reward a product with more success.
👉 How organizations can prepare and design for open platforms that are resilient and expansive, yet chaotic and hard to control.

Topics / chapters
(00:00) Intro - Gardening Platforms and the Future of Open Ecosystems
(00:39) Simone welcomes the audience
(01:26) Alex Introduction
(04:28) Platforms as Complex Adaptive Systems and Gardening Platforms
(09:08) “Coherence” as an attribute for platform development in Open vs. Closed Platforms
(12:22) Rebound from Centralized Platforms
(16:36) Translating chaotic and complex ecosystems into actionable initiatives in organizations
(29:04) Trust, Organizational Accountability, and Micro enterprises
(39:18) Moral implications of building platforms and open source movements
(49:08) Design for Participation
(53:42) Power of Decision Makers in influencing platform design
(01:00:09) Breadcrumbs (Suggested content from Alex)

Remember that you can always find transcripts and key highlights of the episode on our website: https://boundaryless.io/podcast/alex-komoroske

Episode recorded on September 30, 2023.

Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at https://boundaryless.io/resources/podcast

Get in touch with Boundaryless:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/boundaryless_
• Website: https://boundaryless.io/contacts
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/boundaryless-pdt-3eo

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Music from Liosound / Walter Mobilio. Find his portfolio here: https://blss.io/Podcast-Music

We’re back at the Boundaryless Conversations Podcast, with an all new Season No. 5. 

Join us, as we bridge the worlds of technology, geopolitics, culture, and policymaking. We take a dive deep into the fabric of tomorrow's world, sharing inspiring stories from innovative organizations leading the way in product and platform development. Learn how to build resilient, adaptable entities that thrive amidst change. Stay informed, break free from echo chambers, and become a change-maker in your organization. 

Subscribe to our podcasts on your favorite podcasting platforms, and help us shape a richer, more democratic dialogue about the future of organizing. 

Explore our vision at boundaryless.io as we bring to you - Platform and Ecosystems, from the edge to the core.

For more information: https://boundaryless.io.

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In this season wrap up, podcast hosts Simone Cicero and Stina Heikkilä talk about the new research compass of Boundaryless and ruminate on some of the gems of the season.Simone and Stina also share some highlights from the long list of episodes of the Boundaryless Conversations podcast — almost 90 and counting! — and provide some pointers for future research.

It’s worth catching up with the ideas in the recent blog A Research Compass: Platform-Ecosystem Thinking in 2023 when listening to the wrap up.

Some of the topics that stood out forming the substance of the new compass include:

The wrap up provides a good appetizer for the upcoming season, which will have some novelties and more co-hosts in store.

A special shout-out to Stina who won’t be co-hosting the next season of the podcast. It’s been a great ride and we’re sure that she’ll be back co-hosting more episodes in the future!

Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at https://boundaryless.io/resources/podcast

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In this season’s final episode, we talk to Bill Fischer and Lisa Gansky about how our old ideas of what's normal are disappearing. There is a need to bridge the gap between old and emerging systems, encouraging exploration and experimentation to unlock our Ecosystemic Future.

Bill Fischer has spent his entire career involved in innovation, from being a practicing development engineer in industry and government, to being an academic researcher, teacher, and writer, to being involved in several startups. He is currently a Senior Lecturer at the Sloan School of Management, at MIT, and an Emeritus Professor of Innovation Management at IMD, in Lausanne, Switzerland. Lisa Gansky is a social provocateur, serial entrepreneur, angel investor, advisor, international keynote speaker, and author of the bestselling book, “The Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing”. Her work on trust, the sharing economy, and innovation has been central in rethinking 21st-century governance, business models, and community dynamics.

The challenges organizations face in adapting to rapid change show that traditional organizational structures are no longer working. To adapt to the changing landscape, a combination of AI, Web3 technologies, and new governance models can enable flexible and modular ways of organizing.

New promises emerge through the overlap between organizations and software, unlocking new ecosystem potential where different players and customers come together, focusing on local relationships and embracing transience for more innovative solutions.

Above all, it’s important to keep up with optionality and dynamism, both key to the nature of Ecosystemic thinking: co-creation and increasing diversity and variance are going to be essential in the markets of the future.

These elements provide the backdrop for this Situational Update on our Ecosystemic Future.

Key Highlights

Topics / chapters

Remember that you can always find transcripts and key highlights of the episode on our website: https://boundaryless.io/podcast/lisa-gansky-and-bill-fischer

Recorded on April 13, 2023.

Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at https://boundaryless.io/resources/podcast

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In this episode, we dive into the world of smart contracts and their remarkable impact on organizational design. Our guest, Justice Conder, provides a thought-provoking introduction to what he calls the third law of nature of smart contracts. We explore the transformative journey from traditional corporations to the realm of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), maintaining a non-ideological mindset and examining the challenges of bridging the gap between the two paradigms.

Justice Conder leads DAO Ecosystem Development at Polygon Labs. Previously, he was a full-stack developer and Agile practitioner for over ten years, and entered the world of DAOs through BanklessDAO, where he contributed as a governance solution engineer. With Justice, we explore the disconnect between DAOs and traditional organizations, investigating how smart contracts—as a conceptual evolution of DevOps—could play a pivotal role in driving organizational transformation. We also discuss how pioneering transformations, like Haier’s Rendanheyi management model, have a symbiotic relationship with the on-chain revolution, offering insights into the future of organizational design and management.

Get ready to be inspired by the immense potential of Web3 capabilities in product development, and discover how these capabilities can be harnessed to unleash innovation, foster user engagement, and shape the future of products and organizations.

Key Highlights

Topics / chapters

Remember that you can always find transcripts and key highlights of the episode on our website: https://boundaryless.io/podcast/justice-conder

Recorded on June 2, 2023.

Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at https://boundaryless.io/resources/podcast

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Join us in our latest podcast episode as we delve into the world of design with Dr. Christian Bason, CEO of the Danish Design Center. We explore the crucial role of how we think - the “thinking” part of design thinking - in addressing global challenges.

Drawing from one of his latest books, "Expand: Stretching the Future By Design," co-authored with Jens Martin Skibsted, Christian introduces the concept of six expansions: time, proximity, life, value, dimensions, and sectors. These expansions encourage designers to break free from traditional boundaries and tackle complex issues like climate change, pandemics, and digitization. We also discuss the dynamic nature of design modes and methods, highlighting the importance of agency and adaptability in diverse contexts.

Dr. Christian Bason brings his expertise in innovation, design, policy, and leadership to enrich our conversation. Before becoming CEO of the Danish Design Center, Christian gathered extensive experience leading organizations like MindLab, the Danish government’s innovation team, and Ramboll Management Consulting. He has published in the Harvard Business Review and Stanford Social Innovation Review and has taught executives at Oxford Saïd Business School, Henley MBA, the European School of Administration, and Copenhagen Business School.

With Christian, we dive deep into the ethical considerations surrounding technological innovation and the responsibilities of designers and developers in the digital space. Our conversation examines the impact of technology on society and emphasizes the need for governance mechanisms to keep up with rapid advancements.

The podcast further explores the role of designers as decision-makers and their responsibility at various scales. We look into the transformative power of unlocking individual creativity and cultivating innovative cultures within organizations.

Lastly, we confront the current state of the world and examine the rise of autocracies and surveillance societies, questioning why top-down control has become such a prevailing force. Christian proposes that we have agency to create more sustainable and human-centered organizational forms that can effectively navigate complexity and build alternative futures.

Join us for this captivating podcast episode as we navigate the future of design, highlighting the transformative power of agency, and embrace a world where creativity and collaboration pave the way for a better tomorrow.

Key Highlights

Topics / chapters

Remember that you can always find transcripts and key highlights of the episode on our website: https://boundaryless.io/podcast/christian-bason

Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at https://boundaryless.io/resources/podcast

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Dr. Nafeez Ahmed joins the show to share his insights about the disruptive nature of technological progress and how it impacts society. He highlights the transformation of five fundamental production sectors—energy, transport, food, information, and materials—urging organizations to prepare for a decade of global phase shift.

In this episode, Dr. Nafeez Ahmed helps us understand how exponential technological advancements and economic factors are reshaping civilization, leading us toward a more decentralized organizing system in a pivotal decade.

Nafeez is a systems theorist with over 20 years of experience and works as a change strategy consultant and investigative journalist. He is the Creator of the Age of Transformation newsletter, where he writes about systems thinking for what he calls 'the global phase shift.' He is also Director of the Futures Lab at United Communications Ltd, where he leads system transformation advisory services for governments, businesses, and charities. Additionally, Nafeez is a Distinguished Fellow at the Schumacher Institute for Sustainable Systems and a Commissioner at the Club of Rome's Transformational Economics Commission.

In this episode, we uncover the challenges faced by established industries in light of the rise of new technologies. With Nafeez, we explore strategic approaches to navigate this phase shift, including making decisions based on empirical evidence and data, and the need for new ways of collaborating across transforming sectors. Nafeez shares insights about the economic implications of AI and the exciting possibilities of reimagining our future organizing system to fit new production systems.

Get ready to delve into the next decade’s phase shift and discover the significance of strategic pivoting in response!

Key Highlights

Topics / Chapters

Remember that you can always find transcripts and key highlights of the episode on our website: https://boundaryless.io/podcast/nafeez-ahmed

Recorded on April 28, 2023.

Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at https://boundaryless.io/resources/podcast

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Špela Prijon and Sascha Kellert join us to share the latest news from Ownco - a platform that combines the best aspects of cooperatives, DAOs, and traditional startups to make shared ownership and the ownership economy more fluid and accessible.

Ownco’s approach to distributing ownership moves along four key dimensions - Upsides, Status, Influence, Redemption - and is an approach born through testing hypotheses and assessing the actual results produced by early adopters. For example, through Ownco’s credit system, companies can issue ownership credits that can be backed—through a legal bridge—with exit proceeds, providing ownership-backed incentives for contributors.

Ownco believes that achieving ownership sharing can be done with existing legal contracts, while at the same time, the potential impacts of Web 3 may be important for the long term.

Špela Prijon and Sascha Kellert are the co-founders, along with Harry Wilson (not on this podcast), of Ownco. Špela Prijon has been active with startups for a long time, as a founder and team member. Most recently, Špela was Head of CX at Ledgy, leading the implementation of various equity plans for hundreds of startups from seed to IPO stage, in jurisdictions all over the world, with an intimate knowledge of the processes of sharing ownership. Sascha Kellert is a serial entrepreneur who studied Systems Theory at Bayes Business School in London with a thesis exploring how to design viable businesses using patterns and blueprints from nature. Over the last decade, he has been developing practices and tools for the alternative ownership economy while building his last two VC-funded SaaS/platform startups.

In this episode, we delve into several practical use cases, talk through regulatory and governance issues, and explore Ownco’s vision of boundaryless, networked organizations, with micro-teams connected through smart contracts and programmable ownership sharing.

Enjoy this both practical and inspiring conversation with two of the passionate founders of Ownco.

Key Highlights

Topics / Chapters

Remember that you can always find transcripts and key highlights of the episode on our website: https://boundaryless.io/podcast/ownco

Recorded on April 28, 2023.

Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at https://boundaryless.io/resources/podcast

Get in touch with Boundaryless:

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