What if the best practices taught in every business school are quietly destroying the organisations that follow them? Eric Ries — author of Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad and How Great Companies Stay Great and founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange — joins Aidan McCullen to expose the hidden forces that corrupt mission-driven organisations, and to reveal the structural defences that keep outliers like Costco immune.

About Eric Ries Eric Ries is an entrepreneur and the bestselling author of The Lean Startup. His new book, Incorruptible, maps the structural forces that destroy company missions and lays out a blueprint for building organisations that resist them. He is also the founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange (LTSE).

About Aidan McCullen Aidan McCullen is a Thinkers50-recognised host, keynote speaker, author of Undisruptable, and former professional athlete. He is the founder and host of The Innovation Show — the podcast where square pegs find their place in a world of round holes.

In this conversation, Eric reveals:

• Why mission drift and bureaucracy are really corruption — and why naming them that changes everything
• How financial gravity silently pulls every organisation toward value extraction unless actively resisted
• The professor story that launched the book — and the question that haunts every founder: is it even possible to build an incorruptible organisation?
• The LTSE ambush: how Eric's team chose potential bankruptcy over compromising their principles — and why that decision ultimately saved the company
• Why the founder hero story and the market story are the same story told backwards — and how that confusion destroys organisations from the inside
• The golden goose paradox: why Sol Price and Robert Owen kept losing control of the very organisations they built
• The Costco governance fortress — how Jim Sinegal created a structure that protects the fiduciary-to-the-customer ethos no matter how hard Wall Street pushes back

00:00 Sponsor Message 00:26 Naming Corruption 02:32 Why Best Practices Fail 05:08 Professor Story Wake Up Call 09:57 Financial Gravity And Strength 12:26 LTSE Ambush And Principles 19:14 Founder Hero Vs Market Story 23:56 Golden Goose And Case Studies 25:19 Sol Price And Robert Owen 30:46 Costco Governance Fortress 33:15 Wrap Up And Resources 34:26 Sponsor Outro

Guest links:

• Book: https://amzn.to/4e89kOx
• More resources: https://www.incorruptible.co/resources/more-failures

Subscribe to the Thursday Thought on Substack for a chance to win a copy of Incorruptible, with thanks to Kyndryl: https://thethursdaythought.substack.com

Subscribe and follow: https://theinnovationshow.io

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-innovation-show/id1148455669

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/63nFKf4bsSWo3W72gWtOsK?si=b62d9614237c4450

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/theinnovationshow

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aidanmccullen