470: How to Build an Invincible Company, with Alex Osterwalder
Coaching for Leaders
Dave Stachowiak
4.8 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 18 May 2020
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Alex Osterwalder: The Invincible Company
Alex is obsessed with making strategy, innovation, and entrepreneurship simple, practical, and applicable. He invented the Business Model Canvas, co-founded Strategyzer.com, and lead authored Business Model Generation which sold a million copies in 30 languages. He’s one of the top-ranked management thinkers in the world by Thinkers50.
He is the author of the book, The Invincible Company: How to Constantly Reinvent Your Organization with Inspiration From the World’s Best Business Models*.
In this conversation, Alex and I explore the distinction between exploration and exploitation that invincible organizations must hold in tandem. Alex teaches us the five most common myths of the innovation journey and what leaders can do to compete and stay relevant in a changing world.
Key Points
Myths of the innovation journey:
- Myth 1: The most important part of the innovation and entrepreneurship journey is to find and execute the perfect idea.
- Myth 2: The evidence will show you a clear path forward why you systematically test ideas. The solution will magically emerge if you just test and adapt your idea often enough.
- Myth 3: A small number of big bets will lead to a large return.
- Myth 4: The skills required to explore a new business and to manage an existing one are pretty similar. Business is business.
- Myth 5: Innovation teams are renegades or pirates that are out to disrupt the old business. They need to operate in stealth mode to survive inside a company.
Invincible Companies constantly reinvent who they are and where and how they compete in order to stay relevant and ahead.
Resources Mentioned
- The Invincible Company: How to Constantly Reinvent Your Organization with Inspiration From the World’s Best Business Models* by Alex Osterwalder
- Innovation Project Scorecard: Evidence Trumps Opinion
Related Episodes
- How to Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages, with Mark Barden (episode 207)
- The Way to Nurture New Ideas, with Safi Bahcall (episode 418)
- How to Start Seeing Around Corners, with Rita McGrath (episode 430)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | No organization is entirely invincible, but there's a lot we can do to support the success on the journey of innovation. |
| 0:08.0 | On this episode, moving past some of the common myths to reinvent our organizations for a changing future. |
| 0:15.0 | This is Coaching for Leaders episode 470. |
| 0:19.0 | Produced by Innovate Learning, Maximizing Human Potential. |
| 0:25.0 | Greetings to you from Orange County, California. |
| 0:30.0 | This is coaching for leaders and I'm your host Dave Stahovia. |
| 0:36.4 | Leaders aren't born. They're made. And this weekly show helps you discover leadership |
| 0:40.7 | wisdom through insightful conversations. |
| 0:44.0 | Innovation is a word that so many of us want to have as a part of a regular practice in our organizations. |
| 0:51.0 | And up until recently, it was a nice to have in many organizations. |
| 0:56.6 | If we have time, if we're able to get to it, has been not necessarily the intention, but in practice what has happened. |
| 1:04.7 | Today with all the changes happening in the world, innovation has become not only an important |
| 1:10.8 | focus for many organizations, but it has become a necessity. |
| 1:14.6 | That is why I am so glad to be bringing to you today's guest who is an expert at helping |
| 1:20.0 | organizations not only innovate effectively, but to become invincible. |
| 1:24.8 | I'm so glad to welcome to the show Alex Auster. |
| 1:28.2 | Alex is obsessed with making strategy, innovation, and entrepreneurship simple, practical, and applicable. |
| 1:35.9 | He invented the Business Model Canvas and co-founded Strategizer.com and lead authored the business model generation book which sold a |
| 1:44.9 | million copies and 30 languages you've heard that book mentioned a number of |
| 1:49.3 | times here on the show before he's one of the top-ranked management thinkers in the world as |
| 1:53.6 | recognized by Thinkers 50. And he is the author of the new book The |
| 1:57.5 | Invincible Company How to Constantly Reinvent Your Organization with |
... |
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