The Innovation Show

"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