The Innovation Show

"Nintendo unlocked a completely underserved market by simplifying the game console." Alexander Osterwalder

Alexander Osterwalder returns to The Innovation Show with a world first. The co-founder of Strategyzer and creator of the Business Model Canvas shares the Value Stack, a brand new tool built on six patterns of value creation. Strategyzer has stopped writing books. Alex explains why the team has moved to applied playbooks, and how the patterns help any team articulate its value proposition and then test which benefit matters most to customers.

What Alex shares in this episode - Why Nintendo won a huge new market with an inferior console - How Henry Ford turned a handcrafted luxury into a car his own factory workers could buy - Why trust was a feature for Airbnb and the entire proposition for FedEx overnight - How Google Ads rescued advertisers from wasting half their budget - Why Salesforce Trailblazers prove identity builders work in B2B, well beyond Harley-Davidson - How Diners Club invented the credit card proposition from nothing - Why Amazon Web Services scores on two patterns at once - Why Strategyzer swapped dense books for playbooks

Chapters 00:00 Wii Ease Booster Hook 00:41 Sponsor Kyndryl 01:18 Guest Intro Value Stack 02:18 From Books to Playbooks 02:56 Six Value Patterns Overview 04:18 Ease Boosters Nintendo Wii 05:54 Access Boosters Ford Model T 06:48 Confidence Builders Trust 07:38 Value Catalysts Google Ads 08:20 Identity Builders Communities 08:54 Market Shapers Credit Cards 09:57 Playbook Demo and Discount 10:43 Giveaway and Where to Find 12:00 Events Closing Thanks 12:40 Sponsor Outro Kyndryl

Get 20% off Strategyzer playbooks at https://www.strategyzer.com with the code INNOVATIONSHOW20.

Win a digital copy of The Invincible Company. Name the gentleman on Alex's slide (he co-authored one of Alex's first books) by replying to the Thursday Thought, with thanks to Kyndryl: https://thethursdaythought.substack.com

Alex joins Aidan in Dublin on 1 and 2 December for Enterprise Ireland client sessions. Looking for a keynote speaker on innovation or change in Ireland that week? Get in touch at https://theinnovationshow.io

About the Guest Alexander Osterwalder is the co-founder of Strategyzer and the inventor of the Business Model Canvas. He is lead author of Business Model Generation, Value Proposition Design and The Invincible Company. https://www.strategyzer.com

About the Host Aidan McCullen is the 2025 Thinkers50 Innovation Award recipient, keynote speaker on AI, disruption, innovation and change, host of The Innovation Show, and author of Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention (Wiley). Learn more about Aidan: https://theinnovationshow.io/about-aidan-mccullen

This series is brought to you by Kyndryl, who run and reimagine the technology systems that drive advantage for the world's leading businesses. With a unique blend of AI-powered consulting built on unmatched managed-service capability, Kyndryl helps leaders harness technology for smarter decisions, faster innovation, and lasting competitive edge. Learn more about Kyndryl and the Kyndryl Institute at https://www.kyndryl.com

About The Innovation Show: the Thinkers50-recognised podcast where square pegs find their place in a world of round holes.

Website: 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

"If there's something that's terrible, it's this fuzzy value proposition with AI slop."

Alex Osterwalder, co-founder of Strategyzer and inventor of the Business Model Canvas, returns to The Innovation Show with a field report on AI value proposition design. A few weeks ago he argued that AI should never replace the human struggle of value proposition work. Drawing on recent work with a large client's product owners and product managers, he now shows Aidan McCullen where AI earns its place, once a team has done the homework that gives a language model something worth working with.

In this conversation, Alex reveals: - The four evidence-backed artifacts every team needs before AI writes a word of its value proposition - Why high-level input to an LLM produces high-level output, and how to stop it - How Strategyzer fed its own customer profiles and value stacks into AI and was surprised by the hero copy that came back - The Value Stack, a new tool that sorts benefits into a key value driver, supporting benefits and table stakes - What Gmail's one gigabyte of free storage in 2004 teaches about the single benefit that brings customers to you - Why a large European marketing team demoted its own "differentiators" to table stakes the first time it used the Value Stack - How the marketer's job shifts towards overseeing AI, much as software developers now oversee coding agents - Why agents can run 100 customer interviews in an hour yet still cannot decide what to build - The reason Alex says AI has no taste, and what that means for product judgment

Chapters: 00:00 Sponsor Message 00:22 Why AI For Value Props 01:44 Field Insights And Demand 03:26 Homework Before AI 04:43 Four Core Artifacts 06:33 Generating Assets With AI 08:10 Marketers As Overseers 10:01 Value Stack Explained 15:15 Agents And Human Judgment 17:41 Wrap Up And Giveaway 18:55 Sponsor Closing Notes

About Alex Osterwalder: CEO and Founder of Strategyzer, inventor of the Business Model Canvas, and lead author of Business Model Generation and Value Proposition Design. Explore his tools at https://www.strategyzer.com. And I am biased but a damn good guy!

Win a digital copy of Value Proposition Design, with thanks to Kyndryl. Subscribe to the Thursday Thought on Substack to enter: https://thethursdaythought.substack.com

Get 20% off the Strategyzer platform with code INNOVATIONSHOW20 at https://www.strategyzer.com

This series is brought to you by Kyndryl, who run and reimagine the technology systems that drive advantage for the world's leading businesses. With a unique blend of AI-powered consulting built on unmatched managed-service capability, Kyndryl helps leaders harness technology for smarter decisions, faster innovation, and lasting competitive edge. Learn more about Kyndryl and the Kyndryl Institute at https://www.kyndryl.com.

About the Host: Aidan McCullen is the 2025 Thinkers50 Innovation Award recipient, keynote speaker on AI, disruption, innovation and change, host of The Innovation Show, and author of Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention (Wiley). Learn more at https://theinnovationshow.io/about-aidan-mccullen

About The Innovation Show: the Thinkers50-recognised podcast where square pegs find their place in a world of round holes, with conversations on disruption, innovation, change, transformation, leadership and AI.

Website: 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

"You know how I know what the real culture of a company is? [Two] things. Who gets the money and who gets promoted."

Robert Burgelman, the Edmund W. Littlefield Professor of Management at Stanford Graduate School of Business and author of Strategy is Destiny and Inside Corporate Innovation, returns to The Innovation Show to discuss how companies renew themselves from the middle. His new paper with Sasanka Sekhar Chanda revisits three Intel decisions through James March's model of exploration and exploitation. Top management keeps backing an autonomous initiative while it teaches the company something new, and support stops when the learning stops.

In this conversation, Robert reveals: - The fab capacity rule that moved Intel from memory chips into microprocessors years before top management recognised the shift - Why a margin rule told him more about Intel's culture than any values statement, and how the same logic cost Intel the iPhone chip - How Andy Grove spent $750 million on ProShare video conferencing, a business that never passed about $30 million - Why Intel's own people called its RISC processor a YARP, years before ARM made the architecture dominant in mobile - The Grove line that sank Intel's networking pitch - Why the burden of proof always sits with the innovator - The people map that helped build Nike's women's business, and why Infosys Consulting needed one - How to spot a strategic inflection point by watching the rate of change in growth - What a 3M executive told him about the famous 15% time - Why the parking lot on Friday nights and Saturday mornings reveals your real innovators

Chapters: 00:00 Growth Problems Insight 01:18 Culture Money Promotions 02:31 Intel Weeds Seeds Setup 05:12 Three Intel Cases 10:02 Cognitive Rules ProShare 20:43 Define Autonomous Strategy 30:26 Intel Capacity Rule Shift 39:22 Strategic Context Battle 47:25 People Mapping Politics 53:58 Signals Inflection Derivative 57:00 Encouraging Autonomy 3M 01:02:46 Tragic Heroes Conclusion 01:05:16 Where To Find Paper

Read the paper (Stanford GSB working paper): https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/working-papers/autonomous-strategic-behavior-organizational-learning-top Robert Burgelman at Stanford GSB: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/faculty/robert-burgelman

This series is brought to you by Kyndryl, who run and reimagine the technology systems that drive advantage for the world's leading businesses. With a unique blend of AI-powered consulting built on unmatched managed-service capability, Kyndryl helps leaders harness technology for smarter decisions, faster innovation, and lasting competitive edge. Learn more about Kyndryl and the Kyndryl Institute at https://www.kyndryl.com.

About the Host: Aidan McCullen is the 2025 Thinkers50 Innovation Award recipient, keynote speaker on AI, disruption, innovation and change, host of The Innovation Show, and author of Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention (Wiley). https://theinnovationshow.io/about-aidan-mccullen

About The Innovation Show: the Thinkers50-recognised podcast where square pegs find their place in a world of round holes, with conversations with world-class authors, scientists and practitioners on disruption, innovation, change, transformation and leadership.

Website: 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

"A good idea and a bad idea look very similar early on." David J Bland

David Bland, founder of Precoil and lead author of Testing Business Ideas with Alex Osterwalder, helped DuPont and its semiconductor spin-off Qnity build an experimentation capability that surfaces risk early and speeds up commit, correct and cut decisions. The work contributed to a 2026 IRI Innovation Excellence Award for Outstanding Innovative Culture. Across 35 real growth opportunities, DuPont saved over $12M by stopping weak projects and has so far generated about $24M from the ideas that passed their tests.

In this conversation, David reveals: - How DuPont saved over $12M by stopping projects early, and earned about $24M from the ones that survived - Why David opens and closes his keynotes with his own bad calls, including a kitty litter brand later sold for a billion dollars - Why a leader should never facilitate their own team's assumptions mapping session - How the assumptions map changed its labels three times before a whiteboard session with Alex Osterwalder at Stanford - Why most business plans amount to "creative fiction in Excel" - The leadership whiplash that drags companies between Six Sigma efficiency and innovation drives - Dead Projects Day, the Halloween event where DuPont leaders dressed up to explain the projects they killed - Why sales and legal belong in the room before the first experiment runs - How to use AI as a sparring partner while keeping your critical thinking

Chapters: 00:00 AI As Sparring Partner 00:53 Innovation Leaders And Whiplash 04:00 Meet David Bland 09:47 Productive Failure And Assumptions 15:12 Leadership Swings And Efficiency 17:36 DuPont Case Study Origins 21:53 Big Bets And HIPPO Dynamics 23:48 Facilitating Assumptions Mapping 29:45 Evidence Labels Evolve 31:59 Business Plans Are Hallucinations 34:53 DuPont Derisking Results 39:20 Making Change Stick In DNA 42:28 How DuPont Built Capability 47:49 Socialise Wins And Kills 50:50 Bring Sales And Legal Early 52:56 Where To Find David Bland

Find David Bland at https://www.precoil.com and https://davidjbland.com Read the DuPont case study: https://www.precoil.com/articles/case-study-dupont

About the Host: Aidan McCullen is the 2025 Thinkers50 Innovation Award recipient, keynote speaker on AI, disruption, innovation and change, host of The Innovation Show, and author of Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention (Wiley). Learn more: https://theinnovationshow.io/about-aidan-mccullen

This series is brought to you by Kyndryl, who run and reimagine the technology systems that drive advantage for the world's leading businesses. With a unique blend of AI-powered consulting built on unmatched managed-service capability, Kyndryl helps leaders harness technology for smarter decisions, faster innovation, and lasting competitive edge. Learn more about Kyndryl and the Kyndryl Institute at https://www.kyndryl.com.

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

About The Innovation Show: the Thinkers50-recognised podcast where square pegs find their place in a world of round holes, with conversations on disruption, innovation, change, transformation and leadership.

Website: 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

"They don't quit their job cold turkey. That's not what I've observed firsthand."

Only twelve companies have ever been worth more than a trillion dollars. Ten of them are American. Eight of those ten were started fractionally, by people who were still in a job or still in school when they built the first version.

Shuo Chen is a General Partner at IOVC in the Bay Area, where she has made over 150 early-stage investments across a decade, with around a dozen exits through IPO and acquisition by Fortune 50 companies. She was one of the earliest investors in Instacart and has sold companies to Goldman Sachs, Ford and Caterpillar. She also teaches entrepreneurship at Stanford and UC Berkeley, and writes the Monthly Note. She joins Aidan McCullen to explain fractional founders, the people who de-risk an idea before they ever hand in their notice.

In this conversation, Shuo reveals: - Why 8 of the 10 American trillion-dollar companies were built fractionally, and 1 in 4 of the Fortune 500 too - The Salesforce story most people get wrong: Larry Ellison wrote Marc Benioff a cheque to go and compete - How Jensen Huang and his co-founders designed NVIDIA after work, while still employed in semiconductors - Why "the organism rejects the organ" explains almost every intrapreneur who ends up leaving - What frontier firms actually are, and why giving staff access to AI tools now counts for nothing - Why revenue per employee has become the number startups check before every single hire - The human-to-agent leverage ratio, and why this is the last generation of leaders who manage only people - How Spirit Airlines' bankruptcy revealed that decades of internal data was its most valuable asset - Why 95% of the world's data sits inside private enterprise databases, and why that is gold to AI labs

Chapters: 00:00 Fractional Founder Myth 03:04 Meet Shuo Chen 05:12 Why Founders Side Hustle 08:28 Proof From Trillion Firms 10:15 Keeping Intrapreneurs Close 13:15 Frontier Firms Defined 15:53 Revenue Per Employee Era 22:22 Advice For Students 28:58 AI Writing And Learning 34:58 Spirit Airlines Data Gold 41:20 Tool Spotlight Woolf 47:12 Wrap Up And Links

About Shuo Chen: Shuo Chen is a General Partner at IOVC, an early-stage venture firm investing in the future of work, and teaches entrepreneurship at Stanford and UC Berkeley. Read her Monthly Note at https://shuo.iovc.io and connect on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/shuo-c

About the Host: Aidan McCullen is the 2025 Thinkers50 Innovation Award recipient, keynote speaker on AI, disruption, innovation and change, host of The Innovation Show, and author of Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention (Wiley). Learn more at https://theinnovationshow.io/about-aidan-mccullen

About The Innovation Show: the Thinkers50-recognised podcast where square pegs find their place in a world of round holes. Hosted by Aidan McCullen, author of Undisruptable, it brings you conversations with world-class authors, scientists and practitioners on disruption, innovation, change, transformation and leadership.

This series is brought to you by Kyndryl, who run and reimagine the technology systems that drive advantage for the world's leading businesses. With a unique blend of AI-powered consulting built on unmatched managed-service capability, Kyndryl helps leaders harness technology for smarter decisions, faster innovation, and lasting competitive edge. Learn more about Kyndryl and the Kyndryl Institute at https://www.kyndryl.com.

Subscribe to the Thursday Thought on Substack for the weekly essay behind the show: https://thethursdaythought.substack.com

Website: 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

"When's the last time you thought about your suppliers as your partner in innovation?"

Paul Nunes, co-author of Jumping the S-Curve, Big Bang Disruption and Pivot to the Future, returns to talk to Aidan McCullen about the companies that come back from the dead. Motorola is the case study, combinatorial innovation is the engine, and the uncomfortable question underneath it all is what your company would actually be worth in pieces.

In this conversation, Paul reveals: → What a Lazarus taxon is, and why a handful of companies reappear decades after everyone wrote them off → How Motorola collapsed, sold to Google largely for its patents, and found a second life under Lenovo → Why a drone is really a phone camera, a gyroscope and some software, and what that means for your R&D budget → The $180 to $200 phone strategy that won the markets Apple and Samsung were not designing for → Why Kodak kept making billions long after everyone declared it dead → The million-dollar Porsche nobody could restore, and why somebody bought it anyway → Why Shockley Semiconductor should be a household name, and what the Traitorous Eight really cost it → Why putting your name on a stadium or a football shirt may be the first signal of decline → The line every chief strategy officer eventually says: it wasn't that we didn't know what to do, we no longer had the people to do it → Why the man who built the Learjet also built the car radio that became Motorola → Why price deflation, not competition, may be the fundamental strategy problem of the next decade

00:00 Innovation And Downfall 01:13 Sponsor And Guest Intro 02:18 Lazarus Companies Explained 05:54 Motorola Rebirth Story 07:30 Combinatorial Innovation Basics 14:41 Modularity And Supplier Innovation 19:18 Partners Turn Competitors 24:33 Motorola And Nonconsumers 27:56 IP And Hidden Value 34:57 Vanity Marketing Signals 39:32 Talent Curves And Seed Corn 44:44 Deflation And Strategy Pressure 48:01 Closing Thoughts And Wrap

About Paul Nunes Paul F. Nunes is co-author of Jumping the S-Curve, Big Bang Disruption, Pivot to the Future and Mass Affluence, and spent years as Global Managing Director of Research at the Accenture Institute for High Performance. His research on growth, disruption and reinvention has been covered by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and Forbes.

Find Paul Nunes on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-nunes-5351773/

About the Host Aidan McCullen is the 2025 Thinkers50 Innovation Award recipient, keynote speaker on AI, disruption, innovation and change, host of The Innovation Show, and author of Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention (Wiley). Learn more about Aidan at https://theinnovationshow.io/about-aidan-mccullen

This series is brought to you by Kyndryl, who run and reimagine the technology systems that drive advantage for the world's leading businesses. With a unique blend of AI-powered consulting built on unmatched managed-service capability, Kyndryl helps leaders harness technology for smarter decisions, faster innovation, and lasting competitive edge. Learn more about Kyndryl and the Kyndryl Institute at https://www.kyndryl.com.

Subscribe to the Thursday Thought on Substack for a chance to win a copy of one of Paul's books, with thanks to Kyndryl.

About The Innovation Show The Thinkers50-recognised podcast where square pegs find their place in a world of round holes. Hosted by Aidan McCullen, author of Undisruptable, it brings you conversations with world-class authors, scientists and practitioners on disruption, innovation, change, transformation and leadership.

Connect: 🌐 https://theinnovationshow.io 📨 Substack (Thursday Thought): https://thethursdaythought.substack.com 🎧 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

#Innovation #PaulNunes #CombinatorialInnovation #JumpingTheSCurve #Motorola #Disruption #Leadership #Strategy #Modularity #Podcast #AidanMcCullen #TheInnovationShow #Thinkers50 #Reinvention

"You don't want innovation. What you want is a tweak that won't be too uncomfortable."

Dov Baron, five-time Top 30 Global Leadership Guru and author of The Art of Belonging, sits down with Aidan McCullen in Vancouver to explain why identity addiction is the hidden reason behavioural change fails — in athletes, in leaders and in entire organisations. From a childhood of poverty in Salford to a 1990 free-climbing fall near Whistler in which he died five times, Dov traces how identity forms, why we get neurochemically hooked on it, and what it takes to build a culture where people belong rather than fit in.

In this conversation, Dov reveals:

• The five levels of the emotional source code — and why most behavioural change fails at the identity level
• What identity addiction is, and why a retired Olympian, a triple-bypass survivor and a burnt-out CEO all suffer from the same thing
• How a 120-foot fall, ten reconstructive surgeries and a dead cat on the couch forced Dov to choose between three lives
• Why "success creates atrophy" and real innovation only happens when things are hard
• The one-day-a-month experiment that gets people wanting to come back to the office
• Why the Great Resignation and COVID's "great pause" were a crisis of meaning, not pay
• Why a boss's sideways look is enough to kill an idea — and what psychological safety really means
• Why the superstar responsible for 40% of your sales may be costing you money
• The "when you did X, I felt Y" exercise that turns conflict into connection

00:00 Belonging Over Fitting In 02:03 Meet Dov Baron 02:28 Early Life And Spiritual Roots 04:50 From Therapy To Source Code 08:46 Identity Addiction Explained 12:37 Near Death Wake Up Call 17:17 Cat Moment And Purpose 23:19 Parallel Dave And Choices 26:03 Pain Drives Change 35:50 Innovation Needs Discomfort 37:51 Building Workplace Community 39:21 Great Resignation Meaning Crisis 41:25 Meaning Over Metrics 42:41 AI And Human Work 44:59 Practice Not Luck 49:33 Psychological Safety 55:10 Lenses And Belonging 01:00:01 Leaders In Transition 01:01:09 Toxic Stars And Meaning 01:09:31 Conflict As Connection 01:18:23 Closing And Sponsor

About Dov Baron: keynote speaker, five-time Top 30 Global Leadership Guru, twice named to Inc. Magazine's Top 100 Leadership Speakers, creator of the Emotional Source Code framework and author of The Art of Belonging: How Conformity Silences Genius and How to Unleash It. Find the book and the Cultures of Belonging course at https://dovbaron.com

About the host: Aidan McCullen is a 2025 Thinkers50 Innovation Award recipient, keynote speaker on AI, disruption, innovation and change, host of The Innovation Show and author of Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention (Wiley). Learn more at https://theinnovationshow.io/about-aidan-mccullen This series is brought to you by Kyndryl, who run and reimagine the technology systems that drive advantage for the world's leading businesses. Learn more about Kyndryl and the Kyndryl Institute at https://www.kyndryl.com and https://www.kyndryl.com/institute

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

About The Innovation Show: the Thinkers50-recognised podcast where square pegs find their place in a world of round holes. Hosted by Aidan McCullen, author of Undisruptable, it brings you conversations with world-class authors, scientists and practitioners on disruption, innovation, change, transformation and leadership.

Website: 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

"Exploitation pays your salary. Exploration pays your pension." — Steve Blank

In Part 3 of The Innovation Show's Strategyzer series, Alex Osterwalder returns to tackle the problem every leadership team quietly struggles with: the core business kills everything that looks different. Building on James March's exploration vs exploitation, Tushman and O'Reilly's Lead and Disrupt, and Clay Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma, Alex explains why good people with no ill intent still strangle new products, new channels and new business models — and what leaders must do about it.

In this conversation, Alex reveals:

→ Why the core business kills everything that looks different — and why nobody involved is acting in bad faith → The SonoSite story: why a CEO sat in a sales meeting and watched his top salesperson never take out the product customers were asking for → Why exploration is a top-down challenge — and why bottom-up passion isn't enough without the right governance → How Logitech's Bracken Darrell used "trees, plants and seeds" to proactively shift 70% of resources out of the core → Why Jeff Bezos was obsessed with Amazon dying while it was at the very top — and what Day One culture really protects → The "Rita McGrath test": what a CEO's agenda reveals about what a company actually values → What Alex told a bank CEO about exploration: "I don't even care what you do, as long as people think you're working on it" → Inside the workshop Alex is designing for a luxury hotel chain — mapping city hotels, beach resorts, island retreats, yachts and private jets on a business model portfolio → Why luxury hospitality's shift from lodging to experiences is an exploration problem, not an operations problem → Hubert Joly on Best Buy: when a turnaround must come before exploration — and why everyone else should start exploring today

00:00 Why Innovation Stalls 00:47 Sponsor Message 01:19 Explore Versus Exploit 02:46 Osterwalder Law Returns 05:52 Sales Incentives Trap 09:15 Seeds Plants Trees 12:23 Governance In Practice 15:29 Luxury Hotel Workshop 18:29 Portfolio Map Exercise 24:46 Tools And Playbooks 26:11 Wrap Up And Sponsor

Find the business model portfolio map and many more free tools at https://www.strategyzer.com — Innovation Show listeners get 20% off the paid playbook library with code INNOVATIONSHOW20.

This series is brought to you by Kyndryl, who run and reimagine the technology systems that drive advantage for the world's leading businesses. With a unique blend of AI-powered consulting built on unmatched managed-service capability, Kyndryl helps leaders harness technology for smarter decisions, faster innovation, and lasting competitive edge. Learn more about Kyndryl and the Kyndryl Institute at https://www.kyndryl.com/institute.

Subscribe to the Thursday Thought on Substack for a chance to win one of Alex Osterwalder's books, with thanks to Kyndryl: https://thethursdaythought.substack.com

About The Innovation Show: the Thinkers50-recognised podcast where square pegs find their place in a world of round holes. Hosted by Aidan McCullen, author of Undisruptable, it brings you conversations with world-class authors, scientists and practitioners on disruption, innovation, change, transformation and leadership.

Website: 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

"You're gonna run up a hundred wrong hills, and you're still not gonna get a good understanding of the map."

Alexander Osterwalder, co-author of Value Proposition Design and founder of Strategyzer, returns for Part 2 of our series. Last week: which projects to retire. This week: value proposition design in the age of AI — why generative AI can formulate a brilliant value proposition, but only if you've done the homework it cannot do for you.

In this conversation, Alex reveals:

• Why building fast with AI without validated customer jobs, pains and gains is "running up a hundred wrong hills"
• The four foundations of an irresistible value proposition — and why even world-class brands can't show quantitative evidence for the first one
• Why teams differentiate against competitors instead of through the customer's eyes
• The Value Stack, Strategyzer's new tool for prioritising the benefits customers actually care about
• Should you feed your secret formula into enterprise AI? Alex's two answers to the data-privacy dilemma
• Why the fear of AI handing your value proposition to competitors is — for now — irrational
• Why marketing teams "shouldn't be writing a word" — and how to turn Gen AI into rocket fuel instead of a shortcut
• The B2B trap: designing for users when decision-makers sign the cheque
• How a solo inventor should ABC-test differentiators and pricing with three landing pages
• The Roger Federer analogy: why e-learning alone will never make you world-class
• Why growth is a profession you learn, not a creative gift

00:00 Building Fast Up the Wrong Hill

00:25 Validate Customers with Evidence

01:07 A Word from Our Sponsor, Kyndryl

01:45 How Teams Misuse AI in Value Proposition Design

02:59 Why a Value Proposition Is Not a Writing Exercise

03:55 The Four Ingredients of an Irresistible Value Proposition

05:59 Benefits Backed by Proof

06:50 Differentiate Through the Customer's Eyes

07:58 The Process and the Playbook

10:06 AI Only Works After the Homework

11:55 The Data Privacy Dilemma

13:04 Safe Models and Why Your Value Proposition Is Unique

16:41 Stop Wordsmithing, Start Iterating

17:05 The Gen AI Playbook, Step by Step

18:58 Inside the Playbook Library

19:52 B2B: Users vs Decision-Makers

22:05 Listener Discount and Webinar Details

23:07 Advice for Builders and Entrepreneurs

26:11 Discipline Beats Creativity

27:02 The Roger Federer Coach Analogy

30:07 The Party Trick: Evaluating Business Ideas

31:51 Wrap Up and Thanks to Kyndryl

Explore the Strategyzer playbook library at https://www.strategyzer.com — Innovation Show listeners get 20% off with the code INNOVATIONSHOW20.

This series is brought to you by Kyndryl, who run and reimagine the technology systems that drive advantage for the world's leading businesses. With a unique blend of AI-powered consulting built on unmatched managed-service capability, Kyndryl helps leaders harness technology for smarter decisions, faster innovation, and lasting competitive edge. Learn more about Kyndryl and the Kyndryl Institute at https://www.kyndryl.com.

Sign up for the Kyndryl Institute at https://www.kyndryl.com/institute and send us a screenshot for a chance to win a copy of Value Proposition Design, with thanks to Kyndryl.

About The Innovation Show: the Thinkers50-recognised podcast where square pegs find their place in a world of round holes. Hosted by Aidan McCullen, author of Undisruptable, it brings you conversations with world-class authors, scientists and practitioners on disruption, innovation, change, transformation and leadership.

Website: https://theinnovationshow.io Substack (Thursday Thought): https://thethursdaythought.substack.com

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

"Spreadsheets are a fantasy made explicit. They're not a metric. What you can measure is the evidence that the business case could work."

Alexander Osterwalder, creator of the Business Model Canvas, CEO of Strategyzer and author of The Invincible Company, Testing Business Ideas and Value Proposition Design, returns to The Innovation Show. He walks Aidan McCullen through the evidence-based innovation playbook he uses with companies like Honeywell to decide which growth projects to fund, which to change, and which to retire — so you get a real funnel, not a tunnel.

In this conversation, Alex reveals: • Why every upfront business case is "pure fantasy" — and what to measure instead • The five levels of evidence, from what customers say to what they actually do • How Honeywell's Growth Symposiums fund projects on scorecards of evidence, not opinions • Why LEGO Movies started at zero on every score while LEGO Friends started at level-five feasibility • The explore vs exploit trap: why 90% of companies judge new ideas with "exploit glasses" on • Amazon's scale from new warehouses to Kindle to AWS — and why AWS was never a business case • Why engineers build too fast in the age of AI, and why needs and willingness to pay come first • The "Mark said we know" technique that makes faith-based investing explicit • What makes an entrepreneurial leader, from Jeff Bezos to Logitech's Bracken Darrell • The move from books to playbooks: the say-do cycle and the market-readiness assessment, demonstrated live

Chapters: 00:00 Scorecard Of Evidence 02:00 Oscar The Cat 03:00 Welcoming Alex Osterwalder 04:00 From Books To Playbooks 06:00 Honeywell Growth Symposiums 08:00 Business Cases Are Fantasy 10:00 Test Needs And Willingness To Pay 13:00 Five Levels Of Evidence 16:00 Evidence Scorecards Per Idea 17:00 LEGO Movies Versus LEGO Friends 20:00 Explore Versus Exploit Mindset 24:00 The Dual Mindset Leader 27:00 Innovation Theatre Confession 30:00 Playbook Demo Market Readiness 32:38 Scoring Customer Evidence 34:09 Leader Evidence Conversations 36:19 Practical Wrap Up 39:00 Where To Find Alex

Find Alex and the Strategyzer playbook library at https://www.strategyzer.com

This series is brought to you by Kyndryl, who run and reimagine the technology systems that drive advantage for the world's leading businesses. With a unique blend of AI-powered consulting built on unmatched managed-service capability, Kyndryl helps leaders harness technology for smarter decisions, faster innovation, and lasting competitive edge. Learn more about Kyndryl and the Kyndryl Institute at https://www.kyndryl.com.

Win a copy of one of Alex Osterwalder's books: sign up for the Kyndryl Institute at https://www.kyndryl.com/institute and send us a screenshot to be in with a chance, with thanks to Kyndryl.

About The Innovation Show: the Thinkers50-recognised podcast where square pegs find their place in a world of round holes. Hosted by Aidan McCullen, author of Undisruptable, it brings you conversations with world-class authors, scientists and practitioners on disruption, innovation, change, transformation and leadership.

Website: https://theinnovationshow.io Substack (Thursday Thought): https://thethursdaythought.substack.com 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