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