Boundaryless Conversations Podcast

In this episode we have two leading platform thinkers on the show: Marshall Van Alstyne, Questrom Chair Professor at Boston University and Geoffrey Parker, professor of engineering at the Thayer School of Dartmouth College. They are both visiting scholars at the MIT Initiative for the Digital Economy and co-chair the annual MIT Platform Summit (see references below) Marshall Van Alstyne and Geoffrey Parker - together with Sangeet Choudary - are the authors of Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy - and How to Make Them Work for You, from 2016. As originators of the concept of the inverted firm, they were further joint winners of the Thinkers50 2019 Digital Thinking Award.  In this conversation, we talk about what democratising access to data means for the ability of players in a platform-ecosystem context to innovate and how regulation should be conceived participatory and ex ante. With creating human value as the North star, Marshall and Geoffrey ponder that we might want to see the creation of a Magna Carta of citizens rights for how we should be able to operate and influence on powerful platforms. Remember that you can find the show notes and transcripts from all our episodes on our own Medium publication.    Here are some important links from the conversation:   Find out more about Marshall and Geoffrey’s work > Geoffrey G. Parker, Marshall W. Van Alstyne, Sangeet Paul Choudary, Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy and How to Make Them Work for You, 2016. https://www.amazon.com/Platform-Revolution-Networked-Markets-Transforming/dp/0393249131 > MIT Platform Strategy Summit, 2020 edition taking place virtually on 8 July: http://ide.mit.edu/events/2020-mit-platform-strategy-summit > Platform Revolution - Offers an operator's manual for building platforms (easy read)  https://www.amazon.com/Platform-Revolution-Networked-Markets-Transforming/dp/0393354350/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1591806248&sr=1-1 > Digital Platforms & Antitrust - Categorizes the harms from platforms, critiques existing solutions, and offers one path forward (easy read).  https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3608397 > Pipelines, Platforms & New The Rules of Strategy - Tells how strategy differs from products to platforms (Harvard Business Review "Must Read" - easy read).  https://hbr.org/2016/04/pipelines-platforms-and-the-new-rules-of-strategy > Platform Ecosystems: How Developers Invert the Firm - Provides a proof that platforms become "inverted firms," moving production from inside to outside, once network effects become large enough (MISQ Best Paper - hard read). https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2861574  > The Social Efficiency of Fairness - Provides proof that treating people fairly increases rates of innovation (mimeo - hard read)  https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1514137   Other mentions and references >  Simon Wardley on the Innovate-Leverage-Componentize (ILC) cycle.  Part I: https://blog.gardeviance.org/2014/03/understanding-ecosystems-part-i-of-ii.html;  Part II: https://blog.gardeviance.org/2015/08/on-platforms-and-ecosystems.html > Simone Cicero, “Long Tails, Aggregators & Infrastructures”: https://stories.platformdesigntoolkit.com/long-tails-aggregators-infrastructures-bdf84e32531d > Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, “5 Economists Redefining… Everything. Oh Yes, And They’re Women”. Mariana Mazzucato on the role of government investment in early innovations: https://www-forbes-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.forbes.com/sites/avivahwittenbergcox/2020/05/31/5-economists-redefining-everything--oh-yes-and-theyre-women/amp/   Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/podcast   Thanks for the ad-hoc music to Liosound / Walter Mobilio. Find his portfolio here: www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/music   Recorded on June 10th 2020

In this episode, we’re speaking to Nicolas Colin, co-founder & director of The Family, a pan-European investment firm founded in 2013 and headquartered in London. Nicolas publishes an extremely valuable newsletter European Straits about entrepreneurship, finance, strategy and policy, with a European perspective. He’s also the author of three books, one of which is Hedge: A Greater Safety Net for the Entrepreneurial Age and member of the board of directors at Radio France, and a former commissioner at CNIL (the French personal data protection authority). Nicolas also contributes to several other outlets, such as co-host at Nouveau Départ with his wife Laetitia Vitaud (in French), and as a columnist at Sifted.    In this conversation, we try to unpack why Nicolas thinks the current crisis is going to accelerate the transition to what he has recently called a more “mature entrepreneurial economy” and what he means with the Entrepreneurial Age is, a concept he uses to describe the networked computing-powered world where individuals - or users - are more important than having fixed assets on a balance sheet.  We also talk about the balance between building organizations based on attracting outsiders and the need to be resilient to sudden drops in users, which some tech companies seem to get wrong.   Remember that you can find the show notes and transcripts from all our episodes on our  Medium publication.    To find out more about Nicolas Colin’s work: > Twitter: https://twitter.com/Nicolas_Colin > Newsletter: https://europeanstraits.substack.com/ > Nicolas Colin (2018). Hedge: A Greater Safety Net for the Entrepreneurial Age: https://www.amazon.com/Hedge-Greater-Safety-Net-Entrepreneurial/dp/1718917082   Other references and mentions: > Structural Shifts podcast by Aperture, “Previewing the post-pandemic World”, with Nicolas Colin, Laetitia Vitaud and Ian Charles Stewart: https://medium.com/aperture-hub/previewing-the-post-pandemic-world-17-7be38279c2c7 > Babak Nivi coined the term “Entrepreneurial Age” (2013): https://venturehacks.com/the-entrepreneurial-age > Carlota Perez’ work on technological revolutions: http://www.carlotaperez.org/ > Balaji Srinivasan On The Argument For Decentralization - Part 1, Pomp Podcast #295: https://youtu.be/SU6H-5kA0FA  > Fernand Braudel, on Civilisation and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, in 3 volumes: https://www.amazon.com/Civilization-Capitalism-15th-18th-Century-Vol/dp/0520081145: > Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/podcast > Thanks for the ad-hoc music to Liosound / Walter Mobilio. Find his portfolio here: www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/music Recorded on May 29th 2020

In this episode, we’re having a boundaryless conversation with Joe Norman, a complex systems scientist researching systemic risk and precaution in large-scale systems. Joe explores strategies for uncertainty, complex systems engineering, pattern formation in biological and social systems. Joe’s work brings amazing insights to creating new organizational development models that could be better equipped to deal with the asymmetric risk factors that we foresee these days, in light of rising complexity of the human society and of the destabilization of its support systems.  We talk about decentralization and localism as a way to deflate such risks while changing the landscape of organising and influencing its salience. Joe underlines the importance of tackling challenges at the appropriate scale, applying a multi-scale variety lens. Our conversation further points in the direction of systemic health-embeddedness and the principle of subsidiarity and the precautionary principle as providing adequate constraints, rather than directions, for systems to evolve. Remember that you can find the show notes and transcripts from all our episodes on our Medium publication.  To find out more about Joe’s work: > Joe’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/normonics > Email: joe.w.norman@gmail.com > Website: http://jwnorman.com/ Other mentions and references: > Balaji Srinivasan On The Argument For Decentralization - Part 1, Pomp Podcast #295: https://youtu.be/SU6H-5kA0FA  > Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture:  https://www.amazon.com/Unsettling-America-Culture-Agriculture/dp/0871568772 > Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/podcast > Thanks for the ad-hoc music to Liosound / Walter Mobilio. Find his portfolio here: www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/music     Recorded on May 25th 2020

In this episode, Simone Cicero is again joined by a special co-host and former guest on the podcast — Bill Fischer — Professor of Innovation Management at IMD Business School in Lausanne. They talk to Martin Reeves, Managing Director in the San Francisco office of BCG and Chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, BCG’s think tank on business strategy and co-author of the book “Your Strategy Needs a Strategy”. Martin is also currently leading research on the post-COVID era, winning the ’20s, competing on imagination, corporate vitality, purpose of purpose, strategy and artificial intelligence, competing on the rate of learning, diversity and performance, innovation strategy, organizational vitality and the humanity of corporations. The conversation takes a deep dive into what it means for a business to become “ecosystemic” and compete in the 2020s, and about the bankruptcy of the current ways of doing “strategy” in a world in deep and continuous transformation. Martin also speaks widely about the renewed importance of imagination in organizations and about the need to compete on the rate of learning, combining human ingenuity with the power of machines and much more.   Read our story on Medium to access our key insights and the interview transcript for the episode.   Here are some important links from the conversation:   To find out more about Martin’s work   > https://twitter.com/MartinKReeves   > Your Strategy Needs a Strategy by Martin Reeves, Knut Haanæs, and Janmejaya Sinha: https://www.bcg.com/publications/collections/your-strategy-needs-strategy/intro.aspx   References and mentions   > Martin Reeves, Fortune 50, October 2019. “How the Fortune Future 50 identifies companies with long-term growth potential”: https://fortune.com/2019/10/21/future-50-best-stocks-for-long-term-growth-2019/   > Martin Reeves, Ming Zeng and Amin Venjara, HBR, June 2015. “The Self-tuning enterprise”: https://hbr.org/2015/06/the-self-tuning-enterprise   > Adam M. Brandenburger, Barry J. Nalebuff, Co-Opetition: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0385479506/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_cHC3Eb88TT1DN    Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/podcast   Thanks for the ad-hoc music to Liosound / Walter Mobilio find his portfolio here: www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/music   Recorded on May 18th 2020

In this episode, Simone Cicero is joined by a special co-host and former guest on the podcast - Bill Fischer - Professor of Innovation Management at IMD Business School in Lausanne.   Together they pick the brain of nobody less than Alex Osterwalder, whose work continues to influence the way established companies do business innovation and how new ventures get started. The inventor of the Business Model Canvas, Value Proposition Canvas, and Business Portfolio Map together with Yves Pigneur, Alex just released a new book called The Invincible Company, whose ideas are mentioned throughout the conversation.  Alex talks about why, in the furiously changing world of today, innovation portfolio management is a must, as well as transforming innovation into a pervasive process inside the organization: we also debate a lot on the several ways to do it. We also talk about the responsibility of companies to become great workplaces - being able to keep and reallocate talent across business units - and serve society beyond shareholder interests. Enjoy this jam full episode!  Read our story on Medium to access our key insights and the interview transcript.   Here are some important links from the conversation: > About Alex Osterwalder and his work: > Alexander Osterwalder  (Author), Yves Pigneur, Alan Smith, Frederic Etiemble, The Invincible Company: https://www.amazon.com/Invincible-Company-Alexander-Osterwalder/dp/1119523966 > Strategyzer: https://www.strategyzer.com/   Other mentions and references: > Ritha McGrath, “Transient Advantage”, HBR, 06/2013: https://hbr.org/2013/06/transient-advantage > Scott Anthony, “Breaking down the barriers to innovation”, HBR, 11/2019: https://hbr.org/2019/11/breaking-down-the-barriers-to-innovation > Ritha McGrath, Seeing around Corners, interview with Aperture: https://medium.com/aperture-hub/seeing-around-corners-19-ec64b2260337 > All Things Marketplaces with Dan Hockenmaier, Casey Winters, and Lenny Rachitsky, > Village Global's Venture Stories: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/all-things-marketplaces-dan-hockenmaier-casey-winters/id1316769266?i=1000467536947   Companies mentioned: Amazon, Ping An, W.L. Gore, Logitech, Kodak, Haier   Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at: www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/podcast Thanks for the ad-hoc music to Liosound / Walter Mobilio find his portfolio here: www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/music Recorded on May 11th 2020

In this episode, we talk to Joost Minnaar, co-founder of the blog Corporate-Rebels.com in 2015. Joost travels the world researching progressive organisations, blogs about the discoveries he makes and advises on workplace issues. Joost is the co-author of the book 'Corporate Rebels, Make Work More Fun' (2020), winner of the Thinkers50 Radar Award (2019) and a Doctoral Candidate at the Amsterdam Business Research Institute (VU University, Amsterdam). We also have the pleasure to collaborate with Joost and his colleagues in our work on the Haier Group model (check-up our upcoming webinar: https://platformdesigntoolkit.com/adopting-haier-model-webinar/).  In our conversation with Joost, we get quite practical about the three “fundamental problems” of organising at scale, as he frames it, and how organisations tackle them. We loved how this episode helped us nail down some key thoughts into discernable patterns, drawing on Joost's rich library of experiences from researching so many great organisations.   Read our Medium publication to access our key insights and the interview transcript. Here are some important links from the conversation: Work by Joost and Corporate Rebels: > Corporate Rebels Blog: https://corporate-rebels.com/ > Joost Minnaar on Twitter: https://twitter.com/joost_minnaar >Joost Minnaar, Corporate Rebels, “Solving Organizational Complexity With Simplicity”: https://corporate-rebels.com/how-fast-can-you-scale/ > Joost Minnaar, Corporate Rebels. “How To Organize A Large Company Without Middle Management”: https://corporate-rebels.com/how-to-organize-a-large-organization-without-middle-management/   > Pim de Morree, Corporate Rebels, “A Radical And Proven Approach To Self-Management” (Ner Group), https://corporate-rebels.com/ner-group Other mentions and references > Geoffrey West, Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies: https://www.amazon.com/Scale-Universal-Innovation-Sustainability-Organisms/dp/1594205582 > Geoffrey West profile https://www.santafe.edu/people/profile/geoffrey-west > Principle of least action, http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Principle_of_least_action   > Deborah Frieze, From Scaling Up to Scaling Across: https://medium.com/in-praise-of-scaling-down/from-scaling-up-to-scaling-across-ed5092acd22f Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/podcast Thanks for the ad-hoc music to Liosound / Walter Mobilio find his portfolio here: https://audiojungle.net/user/liosound/portfolio?utf8=%E2%9C%93&order_by=sales Recorded on May 4th 2020

In this boundaryless conversation we speak with Indy Johar, architect and co-founder of Project 00 and most recently Dark Matter Labs (see his full bio here: https://about.me/indy.johar). Indy is really a great thinker when it comes to going beyond “corner shop” size social transformation initiatives to explore the next generation of institutions -  living at the edge between public, open and private.   We explore what he thinks will happen to organising, institution-building and human potential, as we move beyond an information age towards an era where building capabilities for antifragile institutions is key. Find out more about Indy and his work: >About Indy Johar, https://about.me/indy.johar  > Dark Matter Labs and its distributed team: https://darkmatterlabs.org/Team > Dark Matter Labs collaboration with EIT Climate-KIC on Longtermism: Reorienting mindsets towards long-term thinking and acting: https://darkmatterlabs.org/Longtermism-Reorienting-mindsets-towards-long-term-thinking-and-acting  > Medium series of Longtermism, https://medium.com/futures-in-long-termism/futures-in-long-termism-95f64710f9b2 > “Letters from Amsterdam” on how they’re organised: https://provocations.darkmatterlabs.org/amsterdam-2019-2020-letter-to-our-future-dbd67a035ffe > Indy Johar, Good work is the answer…: https://provocations.darkmatterlabs.org/there-is-nothing-wrong-with-the-consumer-society-as-an-idea-3c408b17ce  > Trees as Infrastructure, https://darkmatterlabs.org/Trees-as-Infrastructure-Rewilding-urban-forests Other Mentions and References: > John Vervaeke, Ep. 1 - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - Introduction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54l8_ewcOlY > Danny Dorling, Slowdown (2020): The End of the Great Acceleration—and Why It's Good for the Planet, the Economy, and Our Lives: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B086LK5KSL/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 Music by liosound.Recorded on April 29th

In our conversation with Daniel, we talk about the interplays between technology and landscape, between the virtual and the analogue world, and we explore what kind of new experiments and institutions that may emerge — and what new constituencies will likely gain a key role in organising at scale — for the re-regionalisation of the economy, which is such an important step of society’s regeneration. How to find and support Daniel’s work: > Medium Blog: https://medium.com/@designforsustainability > Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/DanielChristianWahl?fan_landing=true > Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrDCWahl > LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-christian-wahl-phd-51a54616/ > Regeneration rising Youtube conversations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zBxHnVsuus > Facebook groups: https://www.facebook.com/regenerativecultures/, https://www.facebook.com/Ecological-Consciousness-567337650286414/, https://www.facebook.com/groups/920150431523616/about/ Mentions and references:> Daniel Wahl, Midwives of the Regeneration: On the fertile edges of the more beautiful world, https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/midwives-of-the-regeneration-on-the-fertile-edges-of-the-more-beautiful-world-4a28a9c6496f > Daniel Wahl, Salutogenic Cities & Bioregional Regeneration (Part I of II), https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/salutogenic-cities-bioregional-regeneration-part-i-of-ii-2772a13bad9a > Jung’s cognitive functions, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungian_cognitive_functions > Joanna Macy, https://www.joannamacy.net/main > Janine Benyus: “life creates conditions conducive to life”, https://www.ted.com/talks/janine_benyus_biomimicry_s_surprising_lessons_from_nature_s_engineers/transcript?language=en > Ecolise: https://www.ecolise.eu/ > Planetary Health Alliance, https://www.planetaryhealthalliance.org/mission > Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, https://www.amazon.com/Unsettling-America-Culture-Agriculture/dp/0871568772 > Regenesis Group: https://regenesisgroup.com/ > Bayo Akomolafe: “times are urgent so let’s slow down” http://bayoakomolafe.net/project/the-times-are-urgent-lets-slow-down/ > Rebel Wison, Sense-Making the Coronavirus outbreak, with Jamie Wheal, Diane Musho Hamilton: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKDWmKL7xCk > Yuk Hui, Cosmotechnics as Cosmopolistics, https://www.e-flux.com/journal/86/161887/cosmotechnics-as-cosmopolitics/ > Thích Nhất Hạnh (interbeing): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Nh%E1%BA%A5t_H%E1%BA%A1nh    Music by liosound.Recorded on April 06th

This is a “checkpoint” episode where we talk to Lisa about what we’ve been discovering so far in the research for the Whitepaper and get her valuable take focusing on the role of incumbents in adapting to a fast-changing world. She talks about the emerging space between the “no more” and “not yet”. In this in-between space where most of the potential to re-invent organizing seems to lay, ecosystems appear to be a candidate driver of transformation for incumbents, although questions abound regarding their maturity.    > Follow Lisa Gansky on Twitter: https://twitter.com/instigating > Subscribe to “Instigate this” curated by Lisa: https://paper.li/instigating?edition_id=1f138460-82ac-11ea-a01c-0cc47a0d1605#/ Some references mentioned in the show: > Marc Andreesen, “It’s time to build”, https://a16z.com/2020/04/18/its-time-to-build/ > Slavoj Zizek on Coronavirus: "Things will not go back to normal", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfWIMPredyI&feature=youtu.be > Ichak Adizes, Organisational Life Cycle: https://adizes.com/lifecycle/ > Reporting 3.0 “Maturation Matrix”: https://medium.com/@r3dot0/introducing-the-r3-0-maturation-matrix-6652047a0ba8 Music by liosound.Recorded on April 20th

Stowe describes his calling as “the ecology of work and the anthropology of the future”. He’s founder of Work Futures, where he explores critical themes of the future of work, and top writer in Economics, Leadership and Futures on Medium. He also writes extensively about work technologies and serves as a Gigaom editor. In our conversation, we talk about how platforms contribute to changing the relationship between consumers and producers and how this — in turn — leads to re-shaping organizations, as firms optimize for a low transaction cost economy. We also talk about fairness and the importance of distributed governance to be transparent and reliable, allowing the players in an ecosystem to operate without constantly “covering their backs”. How to find Stowe Boyd and his work: > Medium: https://medium.com/@stoweboyd > Work Futures: https://workfutures.org/ Mentions and references: > Rent the Runway: https://www.renttherunway.com/ > Amoeba Management | Management Philosophy | KYOCERA, https://global.kyocera.com/philosophy/amoeba.html > Stanley McChrystal, Chris Fussell, Tantum Collins, David Silverman (2015): Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex Worldhttps://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22529127-team-of-teams > Carlota Perez social and economic impact of technical change (including S curves): http://www.carlotaperez.org/ >Follow the work of Ben Evans and Ben Thompson: https://www.ben-evans.com/newsletter; https://stratechery.com/ > "In all chaos, there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order." - Carl Jung, https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/carl_jung_157280 > Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic and Cindy Gallop in HBR on female leadership https://hbr.org/2020/04/7-leadership-lessons-men-can-learn-from-women > Participatory City: http://www.participatorycity.org/about   Music by liosound.Recorded on April 3rd 2020