The Innovation Show

"If you launch more projects than you finish, you're a bad leader. Your role is not about launching projects — it's about finishing them."

Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, creator of the project economy concept and author of Powered by Projects, joins Aidan McCullen to explain why agile — a 20-year-old idea — is no longer enough, and why the next evolution is the project-driven organization (PDO): a company rearchitected around dynamic, empowered, cross-functional project teams.

In this conversation, Antonio reveals:

• Why EY's Project Everest collapsed despite a perfect plan — and what it says about ego at the top
• The structural blind spot that undermined Nike's digital transformation
• The robot hairdresser that shocked a luxury company's C-suite — and why "safe" jobs aren't
• Why COVID briefly turned every surviving company into a project-driven organization
• How Bill Anderson is dismantling hierarchy and approval steps at Bayer
• The insurance company that ring-fenced €50 million for crazy ideas — and why employees only asked for €2 million
• The bank that had Revolut's idea first, then killed it in the budgeting cycle
• Why "are you crazy?" is the best compliment an idea can receive
• The Toyota-style kill switch every transformation needs — and why 90% done is done
• How Alan Mulally's all-green KPIs at Ford exposed a culture that couldn't ask for help

Chapters:

00:00 Lead Through Transformation 01:13 Sponsor Message Kyndryl 01:40 Why Projects Really Fail 02:03 Meet Antonio And Project Economy 07:04 Projects As Your Future 08:33 Case Study EY Project Everest 10:29 Case Study Nike Structure Fails 13:09 Rethinking Org Structure For AI 15:02 AI And Robots Disrupt Work 17:29 From Agile To Project Driven 21:57 Change Fatigue Too Many Projects 26:02 Co Creation And Leadership Focus 27:37 Great Resignation And PDO Shift 29:09 Burnout After Covid 30:12 Bayer And Haier Blueprint 34:09 Empower Teams To Stop 36:09 From Projects To PDO 39:19 Finish Early Kill Fast 42:42 Exponential Crazy Bets 50:40 Transparency And Town Halls 56:09 Final Advice And Wrap

Find Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez at https://antonionietorodriguez.com and on LinkedIn.

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 Powered by Projects, 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

"Structural uncertainty is simple. The game itself is in question. The playing field is in question. You're no longer playing with uncertainty inside the rules — the rules are the thing that's moving."

Rita McGrath wrote The End of Competitive Advantage and gave us transient advantage. Sangeet Paul Choudary wrote Reshuffle and won the 2025 Thinkers50 Strategy Award. Aidan McCullen puts them in the same room to ask a question neither can answer alone: in an age of AI, is advantage getting shorter, or are a small number of firms locking in something far more durable by making the rules everyone else has to play by?

In this conversation, Rita and Sangeet reveal:

• Why the two founding assumptions of strategy — that industries have boundaries, and that equilibrium is normal — are now absurd
• What Carlota Perez's turning point framework says about where we are, and why data and intelligence are the new oil
• The investor who always bet against Netflix, and the one thing he never believed the film studios would be stupid enough to do
• How Netflix beat Blockbuster before streaming existed, by serving local demand with national supply
• Why Tesla went vertically integrated in the decade everyone else preached openness
• How Reliance Jio commoditised its own cash cow, took 400 million users, and collapsed an industry from 17 players to three
• The difference between a rule maker and a rule taker, and why rule takers are condemned to run from one transient advantage to the next
• Why roughly 93% of corporate assets were tangible in 1975 and almost exactly the reverse is true today
• How Binah.ai deleted the blood draw, the lab, the chemicals and the actuary from life insurance pricing
• Sangeet's test for anyone using AI at work: are you working for the model, or is the model working for you?
• Why translators are now paid half as much to do the harder half of the job
• Rita's SDSS times two: stop doing stupid stuff, then start doing smart stuff

00:00 Sponsor Message 00:25 Strategy Rules Rewritten 01:26 Meet Rita and Sangeet 03:22 Strategy Origins and Transience 05:25 Turning Point in Capitalism 07:25 Capabilities and Competitive Insulation 10:38 Platforms and Network Effects 16:09 Seeing Hidden Advantages 21:14 No Silver Bullets in Strategy 27:38 Policy and Regulation in Transition 32:33 Social Unrest Warning Signs 34:35 Outsourcing Strategic Lens 36:40 Structural Uncertainty Era 38:41 Reliance Jio Rulemaking 42:17 Challenging Strategy Frameworks 44:04 Beyond Five Forces Today 48:26 First Principles Over Models 54:07 Learning Discipline In AI 58:15 Make AI Work For You 01:03:16 Wrap Up And Resources

About Rita McGrath Rita McGrath is a longtime professor at Columbia Business School, a Thinkers50 top-ten management thinker and winner of their number one award for strategy. She is the author of The End of Competitive Advantage, Seeing Around Corners, Discovery-Driven Growth, MarketBusters and The Entrepreneurial Mindset, and she hosts the Thought Sparks podcast. https://www.ritamcgrath.com

About Sangeet Paul Choudary Sangeet Paul Choudary is the founder of Platformation Labs and the author of Reshuffle: Who Wins When AI Restacks the Knowledge Economy, winner of the 2025 Thinkers50 Strategy Award. He co-authored Platform Revolution and wrote Platform Scale, and his work on platforms has been named by Harvard Business Review as one of the top ten ideas in strategy. https://reshufflebook.com and https://platforms.substack.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

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 Reshuffle, 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 don't have to be a methodological genius. These are patterns — 43 simple patterns that anyone can use to include every voice in shaping what happens next."

Keith McCandless, co-developer of Liberating Structures and co-author of The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures, joins Aidan McCullen to explain why most meetings are either over-controlled or under-controlled — and how simple shifts in everyday interaction can unleash a culture of innovation from the frontline to the C-suite.

In this conversation, Keith reveals:

• Why the first field test of Liberating Structures happened in hospitals fighting superbugs — with fifteen languages spoken on a single unit
• The Big Five conventional structures (presentation, managed discussion, status report, brainstorm, open discussion) — and why every one of them quietly fails
• How one father went from a year of monosyllabic answers to an hour-long conversation with his teenage daughter using Creative Destruction
• Why 1-2-4-All fixed a two-year meeting nightmare for twenty project managers in Paris in half an hour
• Why repetition is a source of innovation — and how thinking alone first defeats anchoring bias
• The Ecocycle map a healthcare group crumpled, covered in Post-its, and reused every quarter for a year
• The VA hospital leader who declared mid-session, "All the decisions we just made are final"
• Why influencing culture beats changing culture — and what the adjacent possible has to do with it
• How Liberating Structures moved online with nothing more than a tech host and breakout rooms
• The lesson from Dee Hock, the chaordic organisation, and the war language that limits our world

00:00 Sponsor Message 00:27 Liberating Structures Intro 01:27 Messy Work Environments 02:21 Superbugs Field Test 03:35 What Are They 05:02 Complexity Lens 07:52 Influencing Culture 12:31 Adjacent Possible Innovation 14:18 Personal Life Applications 15:59 Creative Destruction TRIZ 19:28 Neurodiversity Inclusion 22:58 Big Five Meeting Traps 30:27 Microstructures Online 32:26 Online Facilitation Tips 36:50 1-2-4-All In Action 42:25 Eco Cycle Strategy Map 47:39 Liberating Leadership 52:45 Wrap Up And Resources 53:54 Sponsor Thanks Outro

Find Keith McCandless at https://www.liberatingstructures.com — the full repertoire, the app (with at least 33 structures on your phone), and the new Liberating Structures Fieldbook, co-authored with Nancy White.

Subscribe to the Thursday Thought on Substack: 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.

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

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

"AI doesn't have judgment in it — it produces judgment-shaped artifacts."

Usman Sheikh, founder of High Output Ventures and author of the Framebreak newsletter, has spent years writing about how AI will reshape professional services — and the world has now caught up with the puck. In this conversation with Aidan McCullen, he explains why the consulting pyramid — the structure behind every major firm — is coming apart, and what replaces it.

In this conversation, Usman reveals:

• Why firms became pyramids: leverage, margin, and a talent academy paid for by the client's billable hours
• How AI pulls all three apart at once
• What "judgment-shaped artifacts" are — and why AI is fundamentally different from offshoring and RPA
• "Fluent but substitutable": why leaning on an LLM turns your career into a slot machine
• The digital twin trap — why a frozen snapshot of a senior partner decays fast
• The Concentrix vs Sierra story: AI voice agents in regulated industries growing from $100M to $200M in revenue in four months
• The "AI discount": why KPMG asked its own auditor for a price cut — and how the surplus drains to clients and platforms
• Why Palantir and Microsoft are suddenly preaching sovereignty over your data and models
• The intelligence core: the feedback loop that turns pyramids into rings
• How firms build tomorrow's bench — simulators, shadowing, apprenticeships — and why partners near retirement have no incentive to bother

Chapters: 00:00 Sponsor Message 00:31 Guest Introduction 03:10 Why Firms Became Pyramids 05:13 AI Breaks The Model 05:53 Digital Twins And Hiring 07:38 Training Juniors With AI 11:50 Fluent But Substitutable 15:19 Offshoring To AI Shift 20:18 Macro Jobs And Demand 23:14 Who Captures The Gains 28:04 Learning In The AI Era 34:33 Intelligence Core And Rings 40:49 AI Discount And Value Drain 45:21 Building The Future Bench 50:11 Wrap Up And Where To Find 51:16 Final Thanks And Outro

About Usman Sheikh Usman Sheikh is the founder and managing director of High Output Ventures, a venture studio building and backing technology-augmented service firms, and the author of Framebreak, a weekly newsletter on strategy, consulting and the knowledge-work economy.

Read his work at https://framebreak.com and connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/usmans

About the Host Aidan McCullen is the 2025 Thinkers50 Innovation Award recipient, a 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: 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

"Innovation isn't a gift. It's a simple, repeatable five-step process that anyone, at any level, can learn — with nothing more than a stack of Post-it notes."

Carla Johnson, author of RE:Think Innovation, is on a mission to teach one million people to consistently come up with new, great and reliable ideas. In this anniversary-edition conversation, she takes Aidan McCullen through her updated Wheel of Innovation — observe, distill, relate, generate, pitch — and the cautionary tales that show why so many good ideas die in the boardroom.

In this conversation, Carla reveals:

• Why a pet-flavoured water startup failed — and the warning signs it ignored
• The "CF-uh-O" who killed a Disney-inspired pitch, and what it teaches about how ideas are packaged
• What brand detachment disorder is — and why "that would never work here" is your most expensive excuse
• How Big Ass Fans transplanted the customer experience of Zingerman's Deli into an industrial fan company
• How the CDC's zombie apocalypse campaign got 60,000 hits in an hour and put Dr. Ali Khan on stage at Comic-Con
• Why Great Ormond Street Hospital brought in Ferrari's Formula 1 pit crew to cut surgical handover errors
• How Tim Washer turned the Cisco ASR 9000 router launch into a Valentine's Day love story
• Why real creativity only starts after your first 200 ideas
• The "how might we" language shift that stops your brain killing ideas before they're born
• How to give feedback that builds perpetual innovators instead of silencing them

Chapters:

00:00 Innovation Is A Process

00:49 Why RE Think Matters

02:10 Thirsty Pet Cautionary Tale

05:01 Defining Innovation Clearly

07:29 New Great Reliable Ideas

09:54 Perpetual Innovators Explained

11:03 Mentorina Pitch Gone Wrong

15:10 Brand Detachment Disorder

18:29 Complexity Bias In Innovation

22:07 Brand Transplant Big Ass Fans

25:38 Constraints And If Onlys

28:23 CDC Zombie Preparedness Win

33:18 Wheel Of Innovation Update

33:53 Constraints Spark Creativity

34:27 Cisco Router Love Story

39:32 Observation Drives Innovation

45:01 Distill Dots Into Patterns

48:05 Relate Ideas To Brand

53:00 Generate 200 Ideas

55:50 Pitch The Idea Journey

59:32 Feedback That Builds

01:04:19 Where To Find Carla

Find Carla Johnson at https://carlajohnson.co — take the innovation archetype assessment and sign up for her fortnightly newsletter.

Subscribe to the Thursday Thought on Substack 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

"The act of modularizing your product is the very act of inviting your future competitors into existence."

Carliss Baldwin and Kim Clark, authors of the landmark Design Rules: The Power of Modularity, join Aidan McCullen for an Innovation Show exclusive. Their book is the Rosetta Stone of platform strategy — the mechanic underneath the Innovator's Dilemma — and it has never been more relevant than in this age of AI.

In this conversation, Carliss and Kim reveal:

• Why the power of modularity underpins Moore's Law — and everything digital around us
• How IBM engineers, locked in a Connecticut motel before Christmas, invented the first conscious modular platform strategy
• How the System/360 turned IBM from a competitor into "the environment"
• Why the engineers who walked out of IBM's San Jose plant spawned the entire disk-drive industry
• How IBM owned 30% of Intel and contracted Microsoft — yet failed to own the only two sources of profit in the PC ecosystem
• Why "the game is never incontestably won"
• Why Sears couldn't become Walmart, and Walmart couldn't become Amazon
• The Chevy Vega that shook itself apart on the test track — and the cost of losing tacit knowledge
• Why AI agents are forcing companies to map their workflows for the first time
• How Haier replaced twelve layers of management with 4,000 entrepreneurial teams
• Why leadership is the operating system of the organisation

00:00 Why This Book Matters 00:33 Modularity For Founders Investors 01:39 Meet The Authors 02:25 What Are Design Rules 03:43 Design Rules Everywhere 06:50 Digital Tech Meets Software 10:52 IBM System 360 Breakthrough 14:22 Artifacts And Interfaces 20:55 Ecosystem Value Migration 26:10 Capturing Value In Platforms 30:23 AI And Measuring Modularity 34:08 Architectural Change And Retail 37:37 Why Incumbents Survive Or Die 43:28 Modularity Creates Options 44:48 Incumbents Miss Nuances 47:09 AI Needs Workflow Maps 52:18 Tacit Knowledge Lost 54:13 Small Car Hood Failures 59:00 Why Ideas Bomb 01:01:28 History Constrains Firms 01:05:52 Modular Organisations Rise 01:08:58 Haier Team Ecosystems 01:17:41 Leadership As Operating System 01:21:55 Spandrels And Tech Reality 01:27:53 Closing Reflections

About the Guests Carliss Y. Baldwin is the William L. White Professor of Business Administration, Emerita, at Harvard Business School and author of Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations (MIT Press). Kim B. Clark is a former Dean of Harvard Business School, NAC Distinguished Professor of Management at BYU Marriott School of Business, co-author of Leading Through, and co-founder of the Leading Through Institute. Together they wrote Design Rules, Volume 1: The Power of Modularity (MIT Press). Design Rules, Volume 2: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262049337/design-rules-volume-2/ Leading Through Institute: https://leadingthrough.co

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). 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.

Subscribe to the Thursday Thought on Substack: https://thethursdaythought.substack.com

Connect: https://theinnovationshow.io https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-innovation-show/id1148455669 https://open.spotify.com/show/63nFKf4bsSWo3W72gWtOsK?si=b62d9614237c4450 https://www.youtube.com/c/theinnovationshow https://www.linkedin.com/in/aidanmccullen

"Narcissists do draw people in. They start with really appealing visions — and then the wheels come off."

About 2% of people are narcissists. Among CEOs, it's roughly 16%. Jennifer Chatman — Dean of the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and one of the world's leading scholars of organisational culture — joins Aidan McCullen to explain why narcissistic leadership is so often mistaken for visionary leadership, and how to tell the two apart before one wrecks your company.

Drawing on her widely cited article with Stanford's Charles O'Reilly, "Transformational Leader or Narcissist?", and her new book Making Organizational Culture Great, Jennifer separates the grandiose vision we admire from the exploitation that comes attached to it. This episode follows directly on from the two-part Geoffrey Cain series on Steve Jobs in exile — because Jobs is one of the case studies.

In this conversation, Jennifer reveals:

• Why a narcissistic CEO's pay quietly pulls away from their team's over time — and what that gap really measures
• The single interview question that exposes a narcissist: "Who did you bring along with you?"
• Why Steve Jobs ended his career with 13 senior leaders who'd stayed 13 years — and what that says about him
• How "grandiose vision" and "narcissism" overlap on a Venn diagram — and where they split
• The "dark triad" that turns confidence into damage: narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism
• Why narcissistic CEOs file far more lawsuits — yet win no more of them
• The counter-intuitive team move: group your narcissists together
• Why narcissism's damage to a culture is "sticky" — it lingers long after the leader leaves
• How to shield yourself when you can't leave — and when to look for the exit
• Why chaos and uncertainty are a narcissist's favourite weather

Chapters 00:00 Cold open: how narcissist CEOs pull away from their teams 02:00 Welcome Jennifer Chatman, and the Steve Jobs connection 04:00 Kalanick, Holmes, Trump: the quotes that give a narcissist away 05:00 Why 16% of CEOs are narcissists — and how they draw you in 07:00 The delayed damage: pay, credit, and the dark triad 16:00 The one question that exposes a narcissist 19:00 Risk, lawsuits, and the denial of failure 24:00 Ethics, collaboration, and the sticky cost to culture 27:00 How to protect yourself, and Making Organizational Culture Great

(Timestamps follow the transcript markers — shift after the final edit.)

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

About the Guest Jennifer A. Chatman is the Bank of America Dean of the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and a leading scholar of organisational culture and narcissistic leadership. She co-created the Organizational Culture Profile and co-hosts the podcast The Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer. With Stanford's Charles O'Reilly she wrote the widely cited article "Transformational Leader or Narcissist? How Grandiose Narcissists Can Create and Destroy Organizations and Institutions," and with Glenn Carroll she is the author of Making Organizational Culture Great: Moving Beyond Popular Beliefs (Columbia Business School Publishing, 2026). Link: https://www.jenniferachatman.com

About The Innovation Show The Thinkers50-recognised podcast where square pegs find their place in a world of round holes. Host Aidan McCullen sits down with world-class authors, scientists and practitioners on disruption, innovation, transformation, leadership, AI and the ideas shaping tomorrow.

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 Making Organizational Culture Great, with thanks to Kyndryl: https://thethursdaythought.substack.com

Connect: 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

Steve Jobs sold barely 100 computers a month at NeXT — and told his team they'd sell 100,000. This is the decade everyone skips.

Author Geoffrey Cain joins Aidan McCullen for part two on Steve Jobs in Exile, the story of the wilderness years between Jobs' 1985 ousting from Apple and his return. Cain reframes the NeXT era not as a triumphant hero's journey but as a cascade of failure, ego and self-sabotage that quietly forged the leader Jobs became.

In this conversation, Geoffrey reveals:

• Why the "reality distortion field" stopped working the moment the $6,500 NeXTcube shipped
• How Jobs sabotaged an IBM deal that could have made NeXTSTEP, not Windows, the world's operating system
• The airport moment he abandoned his own salesman in front of 800 IBM engineers
• Why he killed Ross Perot's pipeline to the CIA, NSA and Pentagon with five words: "I don't like the feds"
• How a Daffy Duck demo blew up a Disney deal worth thousands of computers
• Why Tim Berners-Lee built the entire World Wide Web on a single NeXTcube in 1990
• How the creators of Doom were turned away because Jobs "didn't like games"
• The advisor's warning Jobs ignored for a decade: "your assets have feet"
• Why putting on a grey suit to sell enterprise software was the moment he finally grew up
• The random mid-level phone call — not Jobs' idea — that put him back on the road to Apple

Chapters: 00:00 Think beyond use cases 00:38 Sponsor message 01:03 Part two begins 01:54 NeXT revenge era 03:48 Reality distorts back 04:56 Cube launch hype 05:59 Sales reality check 06:48 Founder market lesson 08:04 The hero–shithead rollercoaster 12:09 Carrot and stick leadership 13:25 Assets have feet 14:57 Co-founders depart 17:50 Buggy cube problems 18:53 Writing the donut hole 19:57 Canon investment drama 21:33 IBM deal sabotage 25:40 Ross Perot fallout 28:13 No feds market 28:48 Disney deal blow-up 31:03 NeXT powers the web 32:32 Doom and missed gaming 33:28 Lesson for AI builders 35:32 Motorola dumps NeXT 38:40 Rock bottom pivot 40:07 Enterprise sales Jobs 43:34 WebObjects breakthrough 48:06 Pixar vindication 51:05 Phone call to Apple 54:47 Wrap up and sponsor

About Geoffrey Cain: Geoffrey Cain is an author and investigative journalist. His book Steve Jobs in Exile chronicles the NeXT and Pixar years, and he also wrote Samsung Rising. Website: https://geoffreycain.net Substack (The Burner Files): https://geoffreycain.substack.com X: https://x.com/Geoffrey_Cain

About The Innovation Show: The Innovation Show is the Thinkers50-recognised podcast where square pegs find their place in a world of round holes. Host Aidan McCullen sits down with world-class authors, scientists and practitioners on disruption, innovation, change, leadership, AI and the ideas shaping tomorrow.

Subscribe to the Thursday Thought on Substack for extra content and webinars.

Connect: Website: https://theinnovationshow.io Substack: 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

About the Author Geoffrey Cain is an author and investigative journalist, and the author of Steve Jobs in Exile and Samsung Rising. https://geoffreycain.net — https://geoffreycain.substack.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

Steve Jobs was nearly bankrupt — down to his last $150 million, burning $50 million a year, with every product failing and every investor gone.

Award-winning journalist Geoffrey Cain, author of Steve Jobs in Exile: The Untold Story of NeXT and the Remaking of a Technology Visionary, joins Aidan McCullen to tell the story the official Jobs narrative leaves out: the dozen years between his firing from Apple in 1985 and his triumphant return. Drawing on unbroadcast NeXT footage, new interviews and internal documents, Cain reveals the failures, the revenge and the near-misses that forged the leader who saved Apple.

In this conversation, Geoffrey reveals:

• Why Steve Jobs was three years from bankruptcy in the early 1990s
• The "low-level employees" lie that made Apple sue its own co-founder
• Why the lawsuit backfired and handed Jobs exactly what he wanted
• How a Bill Gates talk about CD-ROMs accidentally named NeXT
• Why revenge on John Sculley — not changing the world — drove the founding of NeXT
• The "hero–shithead rollercoaster" every NeXT executive insisted Cain had to understand
• The "deep shit list" Jobs ran the company on — and the mindset shift that replaced it
• How George Lucas's divorce handed Jobs Pixar at a fire-sale price
• Why Ross Perot bet $20 million on a company with no product
• "Steve on a Stick" — the celebrity sales act that kept NeXT alive

Chapters:

00:00 Failures Before Fame

01:03 Sponsor Message

01:36 NeXT Years Overview

02:50 Meet Geoffrey Cain

06:46 Survivorship Bias Lens

08:59 Near Bankruptcy Stakes

11:50 Fired From Apple 1985

14:37 Summer In Exile

19:11 Rival Jean-Louis Gassée

22:22 Dan'l Lewin And Education

27:32 Revenge Fuels NeXT

30:52 Apple Sues Steve Jobs

34:37 Lawsuit Backfires

36:23 Naming NeXT

39:02 Betting Careers On Steve

42:08 Pixar Fire Sale Bet

45:28 Working With Steve

46:31 Hero Shithead Rollercoaster

49:11 NeXT Talent Hierarchy

53:14 Luxury Spending Spree

58:32 Ross Perot Big Check

01:02:04 Deep Shit List Management

01:08:28 Canon Optical Disk Gamble

01:13:38 Businessland Sales Fallout

01:17:22 Wrap Up And Sponsor

Find Geoffrey Cain at https://geoffreycain.net, on X at @Geoffrey_Cain and on LinkedIn (GCain).

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.

Subscribe to the Thursday Thought on Substack for a chance to win a copy of Steve Jobs in Exile, 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. Aidan McCullen hosts world-class authors, scientists and practitioners on disruption, innovation, change, transformation, leadership, AI and the ideas shaping tomorrow.

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

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

One developer. Six months. An $80 million sale to Wix. That's not the future of work — it's already here.

In this special panel from the Kyndryl Institute and The Innovation Show, host Aidan McCullen brings together four of the world's sharpest minds on strategy, innovation and disruption to explain why most leaders are using AI completely wrong — and what to do instead. Rita McGrath (Columbia, author of The Entrepreneurial Mindset and originator of "transient advantage"), Alexander Osterwalder (creator of the Business Model Canvas, CEO of Strategyzer), Ismail Amla (SVP at Kyndryl, author of From Incremental to Exponential) and Usman Sheikh (author of Frame Break, MD of High Output Ventures) map how work, value and power are being redrawn.

In this conversation, the panel reveals:

• Why painting over a rusty gate explains how most companies are misusing AI
• How a single developer sold an $80 million company to Wix after six months of solo work
• What Jensen Huang does every Sunday night to stay connected to NVIDIA's front line
• Why Bayer put its whole workforce on 90-day cycles — and how it kills office politics
• The "verification bottleneck" that quietly cancels out every speed gain from AI
• Why one firm tracking staff AI logins for promotions missed the point entirely
• How the billable hour is dying — and what replaces it
• Why labour arbitrage flipped from advantage to liability in just twelve months
• What a Korean fintech founded by a dentist (Toss) teaches us about permissionless teams
• Where incumbents still hold a moat that AI-native startups can't touch

Chapters: 00:00 AI Moment Opens

00:35 Meet The Panel

02:20 Rewiring Organisations

03:36 Rusty Gate Lesson

04:25 Entrepreneurial CEO Return

06:28 Permissionless Transition

08:39 One-Person Unicorns

10:13 Power Redefined

13:17 Verification Bottleneck

15:46 Agents In The Enterprise

20:22 Gaming AI Metrics

22:54 Death Of The Billable Hour

24:23 Electricity Era Analogy

26:18 Business Model Fundamentals

28:04 Rethinking Business Models

29:04 AI Native vs Legacy

29:49 Services Industry Upended

33:40 First Steps For Incumbents

37:51 Toss And Team Autonomy

41:17 Incentives And Accountability

45:42 Incumbent Data Moats

47:50 Elevator Pitches And Wrap-Up

The panel: Rita McGrath — https://www.ritamcgrath.com

Alexander Osterwalder / Strategyzer — https://www.strategyzer.com

Ismail Amla, From Incremental to Exponential — https://www.kyndryl.com

Usman Sheikh, Frame Break — https://highoutputventures.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.

Subscribe to the Thursday Thought on Substack : https://thethursdaythought.substack.com

About The Innovation Show: The Thinkers50-recognised podcast where square pegs find their place in a world of round holes. Each week, Aidan McCullen sits down with world-class authors, scientists and practitioners to explore disruption, innovation, change, leadership, AI and the ideas shaping tomorrow.

About the host: Aidan McCullen — 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

Follow and subscribe:

Website: https://theinnovationshow.io

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

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/63nFKf4bsSWo3W72gWtOsK

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

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