Episode #381: Alex Osterwalder on Building an Invincible Company

May 9, 2020

Alex Osterwalder, strategy and innovation expert and co-creator of the Business Model Canvas, discusses what it takes to build an invincible company. He highlights the importance of constant reinvention and cultivating an innovative culture for survival. COVID-19 has accelerated the need for firms to embrace exploration instead of clinging to traditional models. Alex also critiques short-term thinking, advocating for long-term investments and evidence-based decision-making. He shares insights from Hilti's business model shift and patterns that can ensure defensibility in today's market.

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INSIGHT

Three Traits Of Invincible Companies

Invincible companies constantly reinvent themselves before crisis forces them to.
They build defensible business models and transcend industry boundaries to remain hard to catch.

ADVICE

Separate Explore From Exploit

Treat exploration and exploitation as different worlds with different rules and processes.
Give teams autonomy to iterate quickly with cheap experiments and learn fast.

ADVICE

Make Many Small Bets

Run many small, time-boxed experiments and kill most quickly instead of making a few big bets.
Reinvest only in experiments that produce evidence and scale them progressively.

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This episode is brought to you by Collective Campus brand new online innovation courses. Whether you want to learn about business models and testing ideas with Alex Osterwalder, building a corporate startup with Dan Toma, or learn about topics such as design thinking, and agile fundamentals, head to www.collectivecampus.io/online

I’ll also be running a 2-hour webinar on remote work and productivity in early July, based on the popularity of my five levels of remote work article, which you can learn more about at bit.ly/fivelevelswebinar

And to today’s episode.

Dr. Alexander (Alex) Osterwalder is one of the world's most influential strategy and innovation experts, a leading author, entrepreneur, and in-demand speaker whose work has changed the way established companies do business and how new ventures get started.

Ranked No. 4 of the top 50 management thinkers worldwide, Osterwalder is known for simplifying the strategy development process and turning complex concepts into digestible visual models.

Together with Yves Pigneur, he invented the Business Model Canvas, Value Proposition Canvas, and Business Portfolio Map - practical tools that are trusted by millions of business practitioners from leading global companies including Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Nestlé, MasterCard, Sony, Fujitsu, 3M, Intel, Roche, Colgate-Palmolive, and many more.

He returned to the podcast to talk about what leaders can do to build truly invincible companies and weather storms that are a result of technological and social change, financial market shocks and of course, viruses.

We explored:

1 - what defines an invincible company

2 - how companies can balance a portfolio between exploration of new business models and exploitation of existing ones

3 - what companies like Amazon, IKEA and Logitech have done to play the long game and stay relevant

4 - and finally, how one such invincible company profiled in the book, Airbnb, might weather the storm of COVID-19

With that, I bring you the one and only, Alex Osterwalder.

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