The Outthinkers podcast is a growth strategy podcast hosted by Kaihan Krippendorff. Each week, Kaihan talks with forward-looking strategists and innovators that are challenging the status quo, leading the future of business, and shaping our world.
Chief strategy officers and executives can learn more and join the Outthinker community at https://outthinkernetwork.com/.
Last refreshed: ⓘ
Follow this podcast in the Metacast mobile app to refresh it and see new episodes.
Don't just listen to podcasts. Learn from them with transcripts, summaries, and chapters for every episode. Skim, search, and bookmark insights. Learn more
Kurt Miscinski, co-founder of Cerity Partners, discusses his vision to build an enduring wealth management firm inspired by McKinsey and Deloitte. He details how Cerity's unique partnership model, language choices, and profit reinvestment strategy fostered a culture of ownership and client-centricity. The episode also explores how the firm scales while maintaining its core values and expands capabilities through strategic mergers.
This special episode of Outthinkers was recorded in front of a live audience in NYC and made possible by our friends at LHH , a global leader in HR advisory and talent solutions, trusted by executives around the world to navigate change and lead with confidence. With deep expertise in executive search, leadership development, workforce transformation, and career transition, LHH empowers organizations and their leaders to thrive in an ever-evolving business landscape. Our guest is none other than...
Ryan Hamilton is an associate professor of marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School and co-author of The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things . He is also co-host of the podcast The Intuitive Customer, and author of a book by the same name. He has consulted on branding with companies like Walmart, FedEx, Home Depot, Caterpillar, ConAgra, Cigna, Visa, and Ipsos, among others. To start a successful brand, you usually need to focus in on...
Gina O’Connor is a professor at Babson College, where she teaches on the topics of Corporate Entrepreneurship and Breakthrough Innovation in large mature companies. Previously, she had a long career at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Gina has co-authored three award-winning books on Breakthrough Innovation and published numerous papers in leading journals including Sloan Management Review, Harvard Business Review, RTM and Journal of Product Innovation Management, among others. Her mission is t...
Robert E. Siegel is a lecturer in Management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he has taught various courses ranging from Systems Leadership to Financial Management for Entrepreneurs to The Industrialist’s Dilemma to Corporations, Finance and Governance in the Global Economy. He is also a Venture Partner at Piva Capital and a General Partner at XSeed Capital, and sits on multiple Boards of Directors and has led investments in Zooz, Cirrosecure, and Lex Machina, among others. His...
In this episode, we are joined by Brendan Rosseau and Matthew Weinzierl co-authors of Space to Grow: Unlocking the Final Economic Frontier . This episode is a journey, metaphorically speaking, into the beyond: outer space itself. Matthew is a Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and the Senior Associate Dean and Chair of the MBA program, where his award-winning research and teaching focus on economic policy and the business of space. He is the founder of the Economics...
Dave Whorton is a tech investor and founder who spent 20 years of his career at the highest levels of Silicon Valley venture capital and tech startups. At the preeminent tech venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, he worked directly with John Doerr for several years. He cofounded four companies, including drugstore.com and Good Technology. This episode is longer than our usual shorter format—and with good reason. It's about companies that last longer. We dive deep into the world of evergreen busi...
Cindy Anderson is the Chief Marketing Officer/Global Lead for Engagement & Eminence at the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV). Cindy has co-authored research reports, published numerous articles, and delivered presentations on thought leadership, diversity, strategy implementation, project management, and technology to global audiences. She is a founding board member of the Global Thought Leadership Institute at APQC, a new association that advances the practice of thought leadership, an...
Faisal Hoque is recognized as one of the world’s leading management thinkers and technologists. He is an award-winning entrepreneur and innovator, and a #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling author with close to thirty years of cross-industry success. Faisal is the founder of SHADOKA, NextChapter, along with a host of other companies, and serves as a transformation and innovation partner for CACI, an $8 billion company focused on U.S. national security. Along with his extensive successful career in...
JoAnn Garbin is a sustainability and technology innovator with a 25-year track record of leading teams “from nothing to something to scale,” creating numerous innovative products and profitable businesses. Her career predates the concept of climate change, and her long career in sustainability combined with her tenure at Microsoft as Director of Innovation in Microsoft’s cloud business, have given her ample insight, into how innovation can and should be a repeatable scalable process. In this epi...
Peter Compo is the author of The Emergent Approach to Strategy: Adaptive Design & Execution. Unlike many strategists from universities and consulting firms, Compo builds his groundbreaking work first as a musician and a scientist (he holds a doctorate in Chemical Engineering), and then gained experience in the “corporate trenches” at DuPont. Hired as a research scientist, he held leadership positions in product, marketing, supply chain, and business management where he served as the Director...
Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez is author of Powered by Projects, Leading Organizations in the Transformation Age, the Harvard Business Review Project Management Handbook , the featured HBR article The Project Economy Has Arrived , as well as five other books. Antonio coined the concept "the Project Economy," on which his book is based. His research and global impact have been recognized and included in the top 50 most influential management thought leaders by Thinkers50. He is the fellow and Former Cha...
Devin DeCiantis is the co-author, with Ivan Lansberg, of the 2024 book THE ENDURING ENTERPRISE: How Family Businesses Thrive in Turbulent Condition. He is a Managing Partner at Lansberg Gersick Advisors (LGA), an advisory and educational partner trusted by many of the world’s largest family enterprises. Devin’s work and focus is on the financial, organizational, and strategic aspects of this business structure—the family enterprise. Devin brings his background in corporate strategy, economic ana...
Sandra Matz is the David W. Zalaznick Associate Professor of Business at Columbia Business School, in New York, where she also serves as the Director of the Center for Advanced Technology and Human Performance. As a computational social scientist with a background in psychology and computer science, Sandra studies human behavior and preferences using a combination of big data analytics and traditional experimental methods. Her research, and the topic of this podcast, uncovers the hidden relation...
Ethan Mollick, is the Ralph J. Roberts Distinguished Faculty Scholar and Associate Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he studies the effects of artificial intelligence on work, entrepreneurship, and education. His academic research has been published in leading journals, and his work on AI is widely applied, leading him to be named one of TIME Magazine ’s Most Influential People in Artificial Intelligence. Ethan also writes to a wider audience about AI, incl...
Andrew Hill, is senior business writer at the Financial Times and consulting editor, Financial Times Live. He is author of Ruskinland (2019), about the enduring influence of Victorian thinker John Ruskin and Leadership in the Headlines, a collection of Andrew’s his columns. We were quite lucky to be able to corral Andrew to have a conversation with us, and I'd be remiss not to preface this podcast by pointing out that rather than our typical format of diving into one author's ideas, framework an...
Dr. Marcus Collins is an award-winning marketer and cultural translator, the former chief strategy officer at Wieden+Kennedy, New York, and a marketing professor at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. Marcus knows how to build an enthusiastic culture around brands and products and services. He ran digital strategy for the pop star Beyoncé, worked on iTunes + Nike sports music initiatives at Apple, including Beats by Dr. Dre. He is an inductee into the American Advertising Federa...
JP Pawliw-Fry , is world-renowned keynote speaker and New York Times bestselling author, also coaches Navy Seals, professional athletes and their coaches on high performance. As the founder of IHHP and an expert in culture, leadership, and emotional intelligence, JP has helped some of the most successful Fortune 100 companies unlock their potential by fostering courageous, high-performing cultures. JPs research has led him to help organizations cultivate high-performing cultures by enabling empl...
Oscar Munoz , is the former CEO and Chairman of United Airlines. Oscar has led an accomplished career, spanning senior financial positions at Coca-Cola, Pepsico, AT&T, and US West. He also served as President and COO of North American rail-based transportation giant CSX Corp. He is also an independent trustee for Fidelity and a CNBC Contributor. A first-generation college graduate with degrees from the University of Southern California and Pepperdine, he was twice honored by Hispanic Busines...
David Edelman is a Harvard Business School Fellow and Executive Advisor at BCG. David spent over 30 years as a chief marketing officer at Aetna/CVS, as well as building consultancy businesses in digital and marketing transformation while with McKinsey, Digitas, and BCG. He now teaches marketing at Harvard Business School and serves as an advisor to top executives in startups, private equity, and larger enterprises. In this discussion, we dive into David’s book, Personalized: Customer Strategy in...
Rebecca Homkes , is a high-growth strategy expert and CEO and executive advisor. She is a Lecturer at London Business School, Faculty at Duke Corporate Executive Education, Advisor and Faculty at the Boston Consulting Group focused on AI and Digital Transformation and a former fellow at the London School of Economics Centre for Economic Performance. A global keynote speaker and recognized thought leader, she is also the global Faculty Director of the Active Learning Program with the Young Presid...
William Duggan is lecturer of strategy and innovation at Columbia Business School, and the author of four books on innovation: Strategic Intuition: The Creative Spark in Human Achievement (2007); Creative Strategy: A Guide for Innovation (2012); and The Seventh Sense: How Flashes of Insight Change Your Life (2015), and his most recent work: Corporate Innovator: A Guide Through the Labyrinth, published in 2024. In his book, Bill covers employee-driven innovation. Bill dives deep into a dilemma he...
Frederik Pferdt is Google's first Chief Innovation Evangelist and author of " WHAT'S NEXT IS NOW: How To Live Future Ready .” During his time at Google, Frederik played a pivotal role in shaping one of the world's most renowned creative cultures. He founded Google's Innovation Lab, where he trained tens of thousands of Googlers to develop and experiment with cutting-edge ideas. For over a decade, he also taught groundbreaking classes on innovation and creativity at Stanford University. Something...
Brian Evergreen , author of Autonomous Transformation: Creating a More Human Future in the Era of Artificial Intelligence , named a Next Big Idea “Must-Read” and for which Brian was shortlisted for the 2023 Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award. Building on his experiences working at Accenture, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft, Brian advises and speaks to organizations around the world, guest lectures at Purdue University and the Kellogg School of Management, sharing the unconventional and innova...
Cristina Alaimo , is the Assistant Professor of Digital Economy and Society at Guido Carli University in Rome, Italy and soon to be Associate Professor at ESSEC Business School in France. Her research focuses on innovation catalyzed by data-based services and the consequences it has on organizations and society. Cristina also studies the broader ecosystem of data exchanges in which digital platforms are embedded and how these new platform ecosystems emerge and evolve. In her recently released bo...
Stephan Meier , is Chair of the Management Division and the James P. Gorman Professor of Business Strategy at Columbia Business School whose work lies at the intersection of behavioral economics, business strategy, and the future of work. Customer-centricity has long been at the forefront of conversations that involve optimizing profit, with the idea that happy customers lead to increased revenues. But a new theory is quickly gaining traction—that employee-centricity is just as important. Stephe...
The world has undergone a transformation in the past century, as the industrial revolution turned many luxuries into everyday commodities. Then, at the turn of the century, the advent of the internet compounded this supply and demand shift. Now, we are entering yet again a new era as we see technology once again propel us into a new radical shift we call: Proximity. Full disclosure, in this episode, we follow a different format to present the findings a book I co-authored with Rob Wolcott, cofou...
Matt Beane , is an Assistant Professor in the Technology Management Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has conducted extensive field research with robots and AI seeks to uncover systematic positive exceptions that we can use in the workforce. His award-winning research has been published in top management journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly and Harvard Business Review , and he has spoken on the TED stage. Curiously enough, 2012 he was also selected as a “Hum...
Christopher Marquis , the Sinyi Professor at the University of Cambridge Judge School of Business. Chris writes a regular column for Forbes and his work has appeared in the Boston Globe, Washington Post, Fortune, TIME, Foreign Policy, and Harvard Business Review. He is also author of Better Business: How the B Corp is Remaking Capitalism and Mao and Markets , which made the Financial Times “Best Book of 2022,” list. Christopher takes on topics that are, or should be, important for companies and ...
Bruce Vojak , is Managing Director of Breakthrough Innovation Advisors, LLC, and serves on the Advisory Board of Midtronics, Inc., JVA Partners, and the Board of Directors of Micron Industries Corporation, and is a Senior Fellow with The Conference Board. Further, he has co-authored five book chapters—in addition to numerous peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations—on innovation. He is the author of No-Excuses Innovation: Strategies for Small- and Medium-Sized Mature Enterprises (...
