Outthinkers

Martin Reeves is Chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute and author of The Imagination Machine and his newest book, Like: The Button That Changed the World. A prolific strategist and researcher, Martin is known for uncovering practical lessons from unexpected places and helping leaders rethink innovation for the real world.

In this conversation, we trace the surprising story of the “like” button—how a few lines of JavaScript, cultural quirks, and serendipitous accidents reshaped business models, advertising, and even human behavior. Martin reveals why most groundbreaking ideas don’t emerge from lone geniuses, but from messy communities, chance encounters, and recombinations of old ideas into something new.

Whether you’re leading innovation at scale or just curious about the unintended consequences of technology, this episode will change how you think about creativity, feedback, and the ripple effects of small decisions.

In this episode we cover:

• Why the “like” button is the ultimate case study in serendipitous innovation
• How social signals scale beyond social media into CX, commerce, and B2B services
• The role of culture, language, and naming in shaping adoption and meaning
• Why second-order effects of innovation often matter more than first-order ones
• A practical lens for spotting and leveraging serendipity inside organizations

Episode Timeline:
00:00 – Introduction
02:00 – Guest Introduction
03:45 – Toaster Projects and Innovation
06:13 - Origins of the Like Button
08:25 - Cultural History of the Thumbs Up Gesture
14:31 - Multiple Inventors and Facebook's Role
34:27 - Inside the Code: How Likes Work
36:11 - Future Implications of Like Technology

Additional Resources:

• Book Website: LikeBook.org
• Martin’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martin-reeves
• Book: Like: The Button That Changed the World

Kurt Miscinski is the co-founder, CEO, and President of Cerity Partners, one of the fastest-growing firms in the wealth management space. Today, Cerity manages over $130 billion in client assets—but it started with a different vision: to create the first truly global, enduring professional services firm in wealth, drawing inspiration from firms like McKinsey and Deloitte, but applying it in a field that historically hasn’t operated that way.  

In this conversation, Kurt shares how that vision came to life—not through consolidation, but through a partnership ethos and a language shift that reframed everything from equity to culture. This is a story of architecture: how to build a firm that scales without losing its soul, and how to align incentives, ownership, and strategy to fuel long-term value. 

In this episode, we discuss: 

• How Kurt went from being a CPA and Deutsche Bank executive to founder of a firm redefining wealth advisory 
• Why Cerity’s operating model borrows more from McKinsey than Morgan Stanley—and how that unlocks scale 
• The strategic philosophy behind reinvesting 100% of profits and how it shaped the firm’s culture of ownership 
• How they use mergers to create a better firm, not just a bigger one—and why that distinction matters 
• The role of language in shaping culture, from avoiding the word “employee” to framing every merger as a partnership 

Episode Timeline:
00:00—Highlight from today's episode
00:55—Introducing Kurt + the topic of today’s episode
02:42—If you really know me, you know that...
05:30—What's your definition of strategy?
06:19—Creating Cerity—the founding story
08:57—Deutsche Bank and McKinsey as inspirations for a services-based business model
16:33—How has Cerity created a culture of partnership within the firm?
26:34—What is Cerity's model for capital allocation?
30:21—Where does the strategy office sit within the organization?
33:33—What are some of the principles that form your competitive differentiators?
37:03—How do you balance and maintain the coordination of the various services offered, as your clients evolve and grow?
41:03—What is your process for reevaluating and expanding your client services?
45:08—Closing

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Additional Resources:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtmiscinski
Cerity website: https://ceritypartners.com/

This special episode of Outthinkers was recorded in front of a live audience in NYC and made possible by our friends at LHH, a global leader in HR advisory and talent solutions, trusted by executives around the world to navigate change and lead with confidence. With deep expertise in executive search, leadership development, workforce transformation, and career transition, LHH empowers organizations and their leaders to thrive in an ever-evolving business landscape. 

Our guest is none other than Oscar Munoz—former CEO and Chairman of United Airlines, who guided the airline through one of the most significant turnarounds in corporate history. He’s also the author of the acclaimed memoir Turnaround Time, which offers a behind-the-scenes look at the human side of executive leadership. 

In this candid conversation, Oscar shares deeply personal lessons on leading through crisis, building trust from the ground up, and the enduring power of authenticity. Whether you're leading your organization through change or navigating a career transition, this conversation offers wisdom and inspiration for every step of the journey. 

Ryan Hamilton is an associate professor of marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School and co-author of The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things. He is also co-host of the podcast The Intuitive Customer, and author of a book by the same name. He has consulted on branding with companies like Walmart, FedEx, Home Depot, Caterpillar, ConAgra, Cigna, Visa, and Ipsos, among others.  

To start a successful brand, you usually need to focus in on a specific, often niche, customer. But to grow the brand, you need to expand your customer base. A few brands have done this well (e.g., Starbucks or Apple) which have this loyal passionate base of fans that stick with them as the brands become ubiquitous. But, more often, brands fail to scale because the new customer they need in order to scale are too different from those core customers. They have different values or needs or beliefs. 

In this episode, we dive into this dilemma, discussing how to predict, preempt, and manage the conflicts that will arise between a brand’s initial customers and the more varied customer segments it must attract in order to scale.  

In this episode we cover: 

• This concept of “CSRM”—customer segment relationship management”  
• Examples of companies who have managed the growth dilemma well and those that have not—and what insights we can draw 
• A practical framework outlining the four types of customer relationship scenarios you may be facing, and what strategies to deploy for each one 
• How brands must be intentional about the type of value they offer

Episode Timeline:
00:00—Highlight from today's episode
01:14—Introducing Ryan + the topic of today’s episode
03:44—If you really know me, you know that...
05:12—What's your definition of strategy?
05:52—The basis for Ryan's second book, The Growth Dilemma
08:34—Breaking down an "identity of culture," within a brand
11:07—Have brands moved from functional to identity-based culture?
15:30—The concept of CSRM: Customer Segment Relationships Management (and the 2 x 2 matrix)
25:25—Breaking down the different types of customer segment conflicts
38:07—How do you know when you need to "fire" a customer segment?
41:19—How do the principles talked about in this episode apply to the employee segments?
43:30—How does the age of hyper-customization affect customer relationship management?
46:02—How can people continue learning from you?______________________________________________________________
Additional Resources:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-hamilton-49b3321/
Book website: https://www.growthdilemmabook.com/

Gina O’Connor is a professor at Babson College, where she teaches on the topics of Corporate Entrepreneurship and Breakthrough Innovation in large mature companies. Previously, she had a long career at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.  

Gina has co-authored three award-winning books on Breakthrough Innovation and published numerous papers in leading journals including Sloan Management Review, Harvard Business Review, RTM and Journal of Product Innovation Management, among others.  

Her mission is to help large established companies learn how to renew themselves through organic growth via game-changing, strategic innovation. She is a firm believer that to be successful, organizations must develop an innovation function, complete with its own people, processes, metrics and culture that operates within the company to translate emerging science, technology and business models into  new platforms of growth that will fuel the company’s future health in spite of itself. 

In this discussion, we fashion our conversation by following her fascinating journey through three distinct phases of studies over years of research—the foundation of her books—that evolved as her research revealed new findings. Our conversation covers more than we can summarize in this short introduction, but among these insights we discuss: 

• What her team’s research discovered are the constraints to innovation—and they’re more often beyond just technical, contrary to what many think 
• The three distinct competencies of innovation—discovery, incubation, and scaling—that businesses must develop, each with different people, processes, and metrics 
• The concept of “domains of innovation intent,”—untapped new markets in which a company can explore and potentially unlock a wide portfolio of opportunities 
• The key learnings leaders should take away from her team’s extensive studies to tackle an often-overlooked component of innovation: talent management 

Episode Timeline:
00:00—Highlight from today's episode
01:14—Introducing Gina + the topic of today’s episode
03:36—A quick summation of Gina's three books—and the research phases within each one
10:59—The second phase of research and book: capabilities
18:10—A case study that led to discovering "domains of innovation intent"
20:26—The third phase of research and book: talent management
24:07—Flipping failures into a portfolio of opportunities
27:10—Ecosystems as a byproduct of innovation
32:27—How are the concepts of an agile workforce and upskilling interrelated?
36:25—What does a leader need to think about to successfully lead these changes?
40:15—How can people continue learning from you?

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Additional Resources:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gina-o-connor-047b862/
Link to books

Robert E. Siegel is a lecturer in Management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he has taught various courses ranging from Systems Leadership to Financial Management for Entrepreneurs to The Industrialist’s Dilemma to Corporations, Finance and Governance in the Global Economy. He is also a Venture Partner at Piva Capital and a General Partner at XSeed Capital, and sits on multiple Boards of Directors and has led investments in Zooz, Cirrosecure, and Lex Machina, among others. 

His multi-lens background and approach have afforded Robert a deep, intricate understanding into leadership in our constantly in flux world today, and how it requires an ever-more nuanced approach.  

In this discussion, we dive into key insights from his most recent 2025 book, The Systems Leader: Mastering the Cross Pressures that Make or Break Today’s Companies, a perfect complement to his first book, The Brains and Brawn Company. We discuss the constant web of dualities that the modern systems leader confronts on an ongoing basis, as well as: 

• How while our business frameworks have long been trending towards change-driven  frameworks with terms like “ambidextrous organization” and “exploitation vs. exploration,” world parameters have grown increasingly complex, requiring a different set of leadership skills 
• The key characteristics of a systems leader, including the 5 cross-pressures that these leaders must learn to balance to be effective.  
• The four abilities that leaders must develop, including developing a product manager mindset—the ability to live at the intersection of customer needs, market demands, and the inner workings of your company  

Episode Timeline:
00:00—Highlight from today's episode
01:30—Introducing Robert + the topic of today’s episode
05:32—If you really know me, you know that...
07:48—What is your definition of strategy?
08:44—An overview of Robert's first book, The Brains and Brawn Company
15:30—What are some key questions in your toolkit to become better at self-diagnostics
17:50—Can you explain your quote: "leadership is ability to restrain in response to a certain stimulus"?
21:30—Can you define a systems leader for us?
23:42—What can we learn from the product manager's mindset?
25:35—Can you give us an overview of the 5 cross-pressures leaders face?
29:28—How is the landscape of investors changing under these pressures?
32:25—The effect of AI on the workforce, and the role of leaders
37:45—What is your advice to someone looking to shape strategy in light of these cross-pressures?
40:39—How can people continue learning from you?

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Additional Resources:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertesiegel/
Link to website: https://www.robertesiegel.com/the-systems-leader

In this episode, we are joined by Brendan Rosseau and Matthew Weinzierl co-authors of Space to Grow: Unlocking the Final Economic Frontier. This episode is a journey, metaphorically speaking, into the beyond: outer space itself. 

Matthew is a Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and the Senior Associate Dean and Chair of the MBA program, where his award-winning research and teaching focus on economic policy and the business of space. He is the founder of the Economics of Space project at HBS and serves as an adviser on space to government agencies, companies, and investors. 

Brendan is a recognized leader in the space industry. He works in strategy at Blue Origin (the space company wholly owned by Jeff Bezos). He previously served as a teaching fellow and research associate at Harvard Business School and as a consultant to the U.S. Space Force. He is dedicated to using space technologies to bring about a more prosperous, peaceful, equitable and exciting future. 

In this episode, we explore the boundaries, and intersection, of fundamental laws of economics within the context of the rapidly developing space industry or market. We also glean insights on how other markets have and will evolve: the automobile industry, ecommerce, precision farming and potentially the economies around AI or blockchain. 

If we understand these underlying economic forces, we can more accurately anticipate when and how such new markets will emerge and, in the case of space, it may be coming much sooner than most of us outside of the space industry think. 

In this episode, we discuss: 

• How the space industry and space technology have the potential to—and will—disrupt many business industries as we know them today 
• The fascinating evolution of NASA as a government-funded R&D entity to a private sector ‘market creator’ acting as a “customer among many customers” so they can pave the way for space innovation 
• The fundamental economic laws that govern how the space industry will evolve—and how markets here on earth will evolve as well 
• The near-term financial opportunities you may not be thinking of that are providing a kind of economic bridge from private sector actors (who need near-term profit) and long-term players (like the government or large corporations who have the funding to pursue the opportunities offered by the moon and Mars) 
• How the rapid formation of a space industry will directly impact companies in nearly every sector, even those with no obvious connection to space 

Episode Timeline:
00:00—Highlight from today's episode
01:28—Introducing Matthew and Brendan + the topic of today’s episode
05:37—If you really know me, you know that...
07:03—What is your definition of strategy?
09:14—What are near-term opportunities the space industry will open?
12:15—Some use cases of revenue opportunities from space
17:39—Introducing the Evergreen '7 Ps'
19:40—How has the role of NASA changed over time?
29:26—What are things that need to be in place to realize the market of space?
32:14—The governing laws of space
37:32—How will competition of the space markets unfold?
40:17—What movies or books "get it right" regarding the future of space?

43:08—What movies or books "get it right" regarding the future of space?

Additional Resources:
Research: https://economicsofspace.hbs.harvard.edu/

Dave Whorton is a tech investor and founder who spent 20 years of his career at the highest levels of Silicon Valley venture capital and tech startups. At the preeminent tech venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, he worked directly with John Doerr for several years. He cofounded four companies, including drugstore.com and Good Technology.  

This episode is longer than our usual shorter format—and with good reason. It's about companies that last longer. We dive deep into the world of evergreen businesses—those built to adapt and grow profitably for 100 years and more. Think of these as the direct juxtaposition to venture capital-funded enterprises—where those are built with the sole intention of selling, going public or shutting down if not performing, evergreen businesses are built to endure.  

In 2013, Dave founded Tugboat Institute to connect, support, and inspire purpose-driven leaders of these businesses, and this upcoming May 2025, Dave, with Bo Burlingham, releases Another Way: Building Companies that Last...and Last...and Last. In this episode, we uncover some of the most profound insights from his book, so many of which fly in the face of current, common, dogmas around innovation and entrepreneurship, including: 

• Why the companies VCs most often tout today as exemplars of greatness (Google, Microsoft) took very little VC funding—and why you should probably avoid VC investors as well 
• The fact that the size of venture capital market has exploded multifold since 1999 and what that means for nature of how businesses are built and operate today 
• The “Evergreen 7Ps” that characterize these companies, and specific case studies and examples of companies that live these values. Two of my favorites:  
  • They pace their growth—and avoid hyperscaling 
  • They pursue pragmatic innovation, rather than radical breakthrough innovation 

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Episode Timeline:
00:00—Highlight from today's episode
01:02—Introducing Dave + the topic of today’s episode
03:19—If you really know me, you know that...
06:23—What is your definition of strategy?
09:00—Explaining the evolution of venture capital in the past 50 years
12:02—The pitfalls of taking venture capital
17:39—Introducing the Evergreen '7 Ps'
24:12—How to know if a business' pace of growth is healthy
26:50—People as a critical part of your strategy
33:58—Pragmatic innovation in evergreen businesses
38:53—What public companies could adopt from the 7 Ps to behave more like evergreen businesses
45:00—How can people can keep learning from you?
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Additional Resources:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davewhorton/
Link to book: https://www.tugboatinstitute.com/anotherway/
The Tugboat Institute: https://www.tugboatinstitute.com/

Cindy Anderson is the Chief Marketing Officer/Global Lead for Engagement & Eminence at the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV). Cindy has co-authored research reports, published numerous articles, and delivered presentations on thought leadership, diversity, strategy implementation, project management, and technology to global audiences.  

She is a founding board member of the Global Thought Leadership Institute at APQC, a new association that advances the practice of thought leadership, and as you heard in the highlight clip, she is passionate about helping organizations quantify the tangible benefits and critical role of thought leadership. In this episode we dive into her just-published book The ROI of Thought Leadership: Calculating the Value that Sets Organizations Apart, which she co-authored with Anthony Marshall. As you know, almost every guest we have on this podcast is a thought-leader in some form and in this episode we get to actually explore the topic of thought-leadership itself.  

In this episode we discuss the role of thought leadership, and its interrelation to an organization's various branches through highlights from her book The ROI of Thought Leadership.

In this episode, Cindy shares: 

• How thought leadership is in fact, quantifiable, and what her organization’s research reveals are the top metrics that indicate the value delivered  
• How organizations can leverage thought leadership to grow their brand’s authority and credibility—and what to avoid in damaging it 
• The types of content you can deliver in thought leadership, with pointed markers of what makes good content (as well as what formats are in or out among content consumers) 
• The role of GenAI within thought leadership—and why it cannot (and to a degree must not) be taken as thought leadership itself 

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Episode Timeline:
00:00—Highlight from today's episode
01:14—Introducing Cindy + the topic of today’s episode
03:55—If you really know me, you know that...
06:05—What is your definition of strategy?
07:20—Quantifying thought leadership 
11:30—Three core metrics for evaluating thought leadership 
13:40—Thought leadership’s role in reaching ecosystems and partners
15:40—Placement of thought leadership in organizations 
19:01—Key aspects of good content 
21:18—Independence and trust as critical success levers
24:05—The enduring value of PowerPoint, books, and print for executives
26:55—The role of AI in thought leadership
33:05—Content portfolio for thought leadership 
36:45—Individual vs. organizational thought leadership
39:35—Key takeaway on thought leadership’s value
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Additional Resources:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/clwanderson48
Link to book: Thought Leadership

Faisal Hoque is recognized as one of the world’s leading management thinkers and technologists. He is an award-winning entrepreneur and innovator, and a #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling author with close to thirty years of cross-industry success.  

Faisal is the founder of SHADOKA, NextChapter, along with a host of other companies, and serves as a transformation and innovation partner for CACI, an $8 billion company focused on U.S. national security.  

Along with his extensive successful career in technology and innovation, and with ten previous bestselling books under his belt, his newest book, Transcend: Unlocking Humanity in the Age of AI, dives into the philosophical and far-reaching implications of the evolution of AI alongside humanity. 

In this episode, we discuss: 

• The metaphorical evolution of AI from being another technological tool to becoming a strategic partner—working alongside humankind as an extension to it 
• Faisal’s complementary OPEN and CARE frameworks, which work in tandem to provide clear guidelines for how to both adopt and harness AI 
• The pitfalls to watch out for, and risks we may encounter as AI becomes even more integrated into society than it is today—as well as how to mitigate these and approach the future with proper guardrails in place 

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Episode Timeline:
00:00—Highlight from today's episode
01:21—Introducing Faisal + the topic of today’s episode
04:03—If you really know me, you know that...
05:36—What is your definition of strategy?
06:37—Purpose as an authentic calling creating value   
08:15—Creating vs. discovering purpose 
09:37—The myth of top-down strategy
11:32—On the book 'Transcend' 
15:26—Evolving metaphors for AI 
16:50—Humanity's reaction to AI
20:04—The OPEN/CARE framework 
26:08—Creating a human future   
28:35—How can people follow you and continue learning from you?__________________________________________________________________
Additional Resources:
Personal website: faisalhoque.com
LinkedIn: faisalhoque
X: faisal_hoque
Link to book: Transcend: Unlocking Humanity in the Age of AI