Boundaryless Conversations Podcast Boundaryless SRL

James Currier, co-founder of NFX and veteran venture capitalist, joins us as our final guest for Season 5 of the Boundaryless Conversations podcast. 
In this gripping discussion, we go through the current and future states of Venture Capital and startups, the role and impacts that AI will have in these ecosystems, and the incumbents' seemingly dominating position in this market. 
James takes us through NFX’s investment strategy and breaks down what it means to be living in a world of AI omnipresence. He covers how AI impacts investment size and deals and shares key ideas about integrating startup solutions into the customer’s workflow as a key defensibility - and thus value - driver.
Tune in for fascinating and deep insights into the future of ventures.
Currier is a five-time Founder and an angel investor in companies such as DoorDash, Lyft, and Patreon. Before becoming an investor, he co-founded Tickle, one of the internet’s first successful user-generated companies. 
With his deep understanding of the mechanisms driving innovation and growth in the tech industry and his passion for mentoring founders, he shares a wealth of knowledge on this podcast episode. 
One of the key elements of our conversation is the significant advantages that incumbents hold in the future of markets impacted by AI in various industries. He touches upon some tried and tested strategies that help startups create sustainable competitive advantages, whether they operate in traditional or emerging industries. James also shares his thoughts on the risks and opportunities of emerging markets such as China and India.
This episode is really packed with strategic insights. 
 
Key Highlights
👉 AI is not a revolutionary new platform but a powerful addition to existing technologies, driving productivity and creativity.
👉 If incumbents leverage their established infrastructures and resources, they have a significant upper hand in the AI race.
👉 Incumbents are likely to capture a much greater share of the AI-driven market than they did during the mobile revolution.
👉 True defensibility of a startup lies in embedding products into customer workflows and creating network effects rather than relying on intellectual property.
👉 The future of venture capital is shifting towards smaller and more frequent exits rather than billion-dollar unicorns, challenging traditional investment models.
👉 A government’s increased involvement in tech industries could potentially stifle innovation, leading to slower progress and bureaucratic challenges for startups.
👉 Looking beyond the glamour of being a startup founder or a VC is realizing that it involves a significant emotional and financial sacrifice. 
 
Topics /chapters
(00:00) Funding Ventures through the GenAI Age - Intro
(00:59) Introducing James Currier
(06:10) Protagonists of the Investment Market 
(09:38) AI impacting the consumer and business landscape
(12:52) What’s the Investment Strategy for AI companies?
(18:47) The Consumer Side 
(24:07) Changes in incumbents
(26:38) Global Transitions in VC Investments
(32:10) Invariant Heuristics in a company’s fund-raising capability
(41:55) Breadcrumbs from James Currier
Remember that you can always find transcripts and key highlights of the episode on our website: https://www.boundaryless.io/podcast/currier-james/
 
Episode recorded on May 10, 2024
 
Get in touch with Boundaryless:
Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at https://boundaryless.io/resources/podcast
Twitter: https://twitter.com/boundaryless_Website: https://boundaryless.io/contactsLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/boundaryless-pdt-3eo
 
Music
Music from Liosound / Walter Mobilio. Find his portfolio here: https://blss.io/Podcast-Music
#VentureCapital #Startups #AI #BusinessStrategy #NetworkEffects #NFX

“Viable System Model” expert Mark Lambertz joins us on today’s podcast to help us unfold organizing in complex ecosystems. 
Mark, a long-time Agile practitioner and a renowned expert on the Viable System Model has a deep understanding and a curious mindset toward all things organizing. We met Mark as an Organizational Coach at Bosch, where he’s driving the adoption of key concepts of the VSM. From his extensive experience, Mark has helped us understand how to use the VSM lens to build autonomous and self-sustaining organizational systems. 
He takes us through the model’s components and practical applications and compares it with other organizational frameworks that we use widely, more specifically, Boundaryless’ Rendanheyi-inspired implementation of the Platform Organization with the 3EO Framework. 
The conversation - where we discover a lot of resonance between the two perspectives - is filled with valuable insights from the ground and helps you move towards a more inclusive model that balances operational efficiency with strategic adaptability.
Tune in, and don’t miss out. 
As one of the first attempts to use cybernetics in organizational management, the Viable System Model was conceived by Stafford Beer in his book - “The Brain of the Firm” in the 70s.
Mark connects the dots in this podcast and explains why cybernetics is important for building adaptive organizations. The podcast highlights the importance of viewing organizations as adaptive, complex ecosystems emphasizing decentralization, coordination, and collective and emergent strategic planning. 
He takes us through the depths of VSM, explaining how it starts with an outside-in perspective, focusing on the environment, and then further breaks down the 5 systems within VSM. 
In this conversation, you get practical insights into incorporating a VSM informed perspective in your organization, helping you stay dynamic and ever-evolving.
 
Key Highlights
👉 The Viable System Model (VSM) is crucial for understanding and designing organizations that sustain themselves through complex environments.
👉 VSM emphasizes starting with an outside-in perspective, focusing on the environment, customers, and markets first.
👉 VSM incorporates a form of hierarchy based on responsibility and inclusiveness, aiming to preserve the whole while allowing for local interests and self-organization.
👉 VSM includes five key systems to ensure organizational adaptability: operational units, value production, tactical management, future planning, and organizational identity. 
👉 VSM has a fractal nature meaning each operational unit contains its systems, mirroring the larger organizational structure. 
👉 The Rendanheyi/3EO model complements VSM by emphasizing decentralized decision-making and enabling constraints.
👉 The future of organizational design is evolving, with an increasing emphasis on creativity, optionality, and diversity. 
 
Topics /chapters
(00:00) Decoding Viable System Model - Intro(01:27) Introducing Mark and VSM(13:12) Hierarchies and Structures in VSM(16:13) Fractal Structure of VSM(22:12) Orchestrating the organization, market, and VSM(27:20) Culminating learnings from VSM, Rendanheyi, and 3EO (39:46) Using the VSM Framework  (44:09) Coming of Age of Organizational Design and Development(47:45) Breadcrumbs and Suggestions 
Remember that you can always find transcripts and key highlights of the episode on our website: https://www.boundaryless.io/podcast/mark-lambertz
 
Episode recorded on May 10, 2024
 
Get in touch with Boundaryless:
Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at https://boundaryless.io/resources/podcast
Twitter: https://twitter.com/boundaryless_Website: https://boundaryless.io/contactsLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/boundaryless-pdt-3eo
 
Music
Music from Liosound / Walter Mobilio. Find his portfolio here: https://blss.io/Podcast-Music
#ViableSystemModel, #VSM, #Organ

Yolanda Martin Olivas, Global VP of Design, ClearScore, joins us on this episode to talk about the challenges and strategies involved in building platform capabilities within organizations. 
From her experience of building platforms at companies like Farfetch, Hearst, Canonical, Kaluza, and ClearScore etc., she takes us through the realities (sometimes difficult) of what it’s like to enable platform transformation and growth.
She argues for organizations to rethink the “growing through acquisition” approach while reiterating the need to focus on a strong infrastructure layer.
As a passionate learner, practitioner, and enabler of platform design; Yolanda is one to take tune into. 
Being one of the earliest learners of the Platform Design Toolkit, Yolanda has been a staunch practitioner of the platform business model and has played a pivotal role in enabling it in several organizations. 
In this episode, we talk about organizational motivations to shift towards platform design models, primarily driven by the need for economies of scale and new growth opportunities, and why focusing on your “why” is important. 
From her experience as a Design Director, she further shares practical advice on fostering a broader ecosystem perspective among design teams. She underscores the need for strong leadership commitment to enable this. 
In this conversation we get insights into what made organizations “make it or break it”, so tune in, and get ahead of the curve. 
 
Key Highlights
👉 Building platform capabilities is complex, time-consuming, and resource-intensive. Organizations, need to make a special commitment to platform design and implement exclusive strategies targeted toward this, not simply extending their existing practices.
👉 Successful platform transitions often start with integrating internal operations before enabling it to external partners.
👉 Design leaders play a crucial role in guiding organizations through platform transitions by fostering a broader, ecosystem-wide perspective; which does not look at design problems in a silo, but as a cog in a larger ecosystem.
👉 The lack of a mature platform infrastructure can make growth efforts expensive and inefficient. 
👉 There is a high risk in prematurely diverting investment from platform infrastructure to other growth avenues, such as acquiring and creating brands.
👉 Effective platform transitions require targeted education and training for different parts of the organization, tailored to their involvement in the platform’s development stages.
 
Topics /chapters
(00:00) Navigating Platform Transitions with Yolanda Martin - Intro
(00:58) Introducing Yolanda Martin
(02:50) Building platform capabilities inside organizations?
(11:05) Adapting to platformization changes
(15:55) Design Leadership for Platformization
(20:53) Stories of Transition
(27:23) What did not work for Farfetch platform?
(32:35) Building or Buying the Ecosystem?
(37:05) Looking beyond User-Centered-Design
(43:34) What helps the organization re-arrange?
(48:19) Breadcrumbs and Suggestions
 
Remember that you can always find transcripts and key highlights of the episode on our website: https://www.boundaryless.io/podcast/yolanda-martin
 
Episode recorded on March 20, 2024
 
Get in touch with Boundaryless:
Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at https://boundaryless.io/resources/podcast
Twitter: https://twitter.com/boundaryless_Website: https://boundaryless.io/contactsLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/boundaryless-pdt-3eo
 
Music
Music from Liosound / Walter Mobilio. Find his portfolio here: https://blss.io/Podcast-Music
#PlatformBusinessModel #DesignLeadership #PlatformEconomy #DigitalTransformation #PlatformDesign

Indy Johar, Mission Steward of Dark Matter Labs, joins the podcast to help us rethink how we organize ourselves and our systems, addressing inadequacies of traditional business models that are no longer sufficient for managing complexities.
Bringing light to how “risk management should be localized, with decision-making power and accountability being as close to the problem as possible,” Indy argues for an organization that encourages participants to be citizens rather than employees and fosters continuous and accountable learning among individuals.
Tune into this episode and learn from Indy, a veteran in building mission-driven organizations, who has always stayed ahead of the curve.
Indy - who joins the podcast for the 3rd time - besides stewarding the mission at Dark has also recently joined RMIT University, teaching no less than “Planetary Civics”, a testament to his influence in the space of social innovation.
As always, Indy comes with a profound understanding of designing complex organizations for the 21st century, from his hands-on experience in creating radical innovations in governance, architecture, and social systems, particularly in sustainability and collaborative economy. 
He starts the podcast with philosophical considerations about the nature of complex organizations and then highlights the need for a radical shift toward a learning-centered organization.
In the conversation, we question the traditional metrics of productivity and value, and further advocate for new metrics that account for collective intelligence and systemic contributions rather than individual output. 
There was no better way to celebrate our 100th episode because this one is a landmark. Grab a notepad and pick a pen, because there’s much to pin down.
Key Highlights
👉 Organizational structures in a complex world, and a shift from command-and-control to systemic learning and adaptability.
👉 Decentralized risk management and the need to localize decision-making to enhance responsiveness and effectiveness.
👉 Dark Matter Labs' mission-driven approach, emphasizing partnerships over traditional consultancy to enable sustainable change.
👉 Need for a paradigm shift in how value is defined and measured within organizations, moving towards incorporating multi-dimensional success indicators.
👉Redefining organizational roles to encourage craft and citizenship, where individuals contribute to the organization's decision-making processes. 
👉 Rethinking legal structures governing organizations, moving towards frameworks that support distributed risk and empower collective action.
 
Topics /chapters
(00:00) Learning Centered Organizations for the 21st Century with Indy Johar - Intro
(01:40) Introducing Indy Johar
(10:31) Value of Learning as a Strategic Advantage
(14:41) Accelerating Learning and Modifying Organizational Agendas
(19:23) Structure in a post-managerial economy
(24:46) The Design of Dark Matter Labs
(34:50) Citizenship inside Organizations
(42:25) Citizen or Employee?
(47:56) Money making machine to avenues of value 
(55:47) Breadcrumbs and Suggestions
Remember that you can always find transcripts and key highlights of the episode on our website: https://www.boundaryless.io/podcast/indy-johar-2/
 
Episode recorded on March 19, 2024
 
Get in touch with Boundaryless:
Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at https://boundaryless.io/resources/podcast
Twitter: https://twitter.com/boundaryless_Website: https://boundaryless.io/contactsLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/boundaryless-pdt-3eo
MusicMusic from Liosound / Walter Mobilio. Find his portfolio here: https://blss.io/Podcast-Music
#systemicchange  #FutureOfWork #OrganizationalDesign #LearningOrganizations #ComplexityTheory

In today’s episode, we have Kelly Sarabyn and Scott Brinker from HubSpot, who take us through their latest report on the State of Platforms in 2024. 
HubSpot has always considered industry education as central to developing its business and brand, and - in combination with some of its partners - released this great report earlier this year. The report profoundly covers how firms now adopt platform strategies to thrive in a digital economy ranging from app ecosystems to services marketplaces. Having spearheaded this, Kelly and Scott shared some insider information with us. 
During the conversation, they highlight the evolution of platforms, from mere technical infrastructures to complex ecosystems, and then further delve into how understanding the intricacies of platform models is crucial for tech companies and all businesses looking to leverage the interconnected nature of modern markets.
This episode has something for everyone, so don’t miss out on hearing from two of the most prominent experts in the field. Tune in. 
Some of our ardent followers will know that this is the 2nd time we have Scott, Vice President of Platform Ecosystem, at HubSpot. Kelly, instead, works as a Platform Ecosystem Advocate, at the same company. 
We are thrilled that they wanted to share the key learnings from co-authoring the “State of Platforms 2024” report - a tremendous piece of work that examines the evolving dynamics of the platform businesses, with a keen focus on the B2B SaaS industry.
In the conversation we explored the implications of evolving platforms for business strategy and operations, emphasizing the necessity for companies to continuously adapt and leverage these opportunities effectively, regardless of the role and business model. Our guests further touch upon how companies need to modulate around proliferation and nichification, integrations across sectors, and even look into these retributions' ethical and social aspects from a community-building perspective. 
This episode is a crucial one and a much-needed dialogue to take platform ecosystems forward, so join in. 
Key Highlights
👉 Deep Dive into B2B SaaS Platforms by analyzing the top 50 SaaS companies’ adoption of platform business models.
👉 Integration as a critical strategy for enhancing user experience and the platform's value proposition.
👉Industries that have fallen short in their platform game, and where their future is headed.
👉The challenges with outsourcing integration, and why the quality of integration makes or breaks your product’s market fit.
👉The platform industry as a continuously evolving ecosystem, and its implications on business.
👉How companies need to adapt their structure to support platform models.
👉Analysis of the broader implications of platform strategies on society and ethical considerations in platform management.
👉The potential of using ecosystems as a distribution strategy, and why even non-tech companies should consider integrating digital services into their offerings.
 
Topics /chapters
(00:00) The State of Platforms in 2024 with Kelly Sarabyn and Scott Brinker - Intro
(00:58) Introducing Kelly Sarabyn and Scott Brinker
(01:58) State of Platforms Report 2024
(10:09) Patterns of Platforms in 2024
(13:19) Outdated Metrics and Practices of Platforms
(16:10) Who should be thinking about Platforms today?
(20:24) Being a part of ecosystems as a distribution strategy
(23:57) Organization Structures Designed for Platforms
(27:31) Who should understand platforms in your organization?
(33:15) Proliferation and Nichification
(38:43) What is the key to unlock the future?
(45:17) Transformation in the Services Ecosystems
(51:29) Breadcrumbs and Suggestions
 
Remember that you can always find transcripts and key highlights of the episode on our website: https://www.boundaryless.io/podcast/kelly-scott/ 
 
Episode recorded on August 7, 2023Get in touch with Boundaryless:
Find out more about the sho

We have a three-time returning guest on the podcast today, Sangeet Paul Choudary - certainly one of the most influential minds in the world of modern business.
Sangeet, an advisor and best-selling author, known for his work on platform economics and network effects, joins us to take us through the next era of competition in business: Sandwich Economics.
He speaks on the principles of the new phenomenon and shares insights into how organizations are now increasingly  "sandwiching" markets vigorously consolidating profits and power. As this happens, Sangeet argues, it’s not always a driver of quality improvement in services and products.
Sangeet’s episodes are always packed with insights on the future, and this conversation is no different - in the closing, we even walk through AI agents, AGI, societal and ethical considerations, and much more. Tune in, this is not an episode to miss. 
As our close followers and general practitioners of Platform Ecosystems know, Sangeet is not only one of the most distinguished thought leaders, renowned for his pioneering work on platform economics but also someone who can spot the intricacies of the impacts that such phenomena have on society. 
He has authored two bestselling books, "Platform Scale" and "Platform Revolution," and comes with over a decade of expertise in advising global firms and governments on crafting effective platform strategies through his organization, “Platformation Labs”. His work has also been featured on leading platforms such as Harvard Business Review, The Economist, and the World Economic Forum, to name a few.  
Sangeet always has golden insights, and this episode is packed with them. He takes us through the new term he coined to describe dangerous market dynamics that key players use to “sandwich” value across multiple layers of value chains and grounds them on examples from various industries. He further challenges conventional thinking and brings fresh perspectives on the ongoing dynamism and complexity of the market. 
So, if you wish to learn what’s really happening in platforms and ecosystems and how markets are evolving…Tune in!
 
Key Highlights
👉 Transition from platform-based business models to Sandwich Economics 
👉 Dominating multiple layers of the value chain, transforming competition and power dynamics in digital markets through Sandwich Economics.
👉 Case studies on organizations that implemented Sandwich Economics: Reliance's strategic maneuvers in India, and Amazon’s creation of their own value assets.
👉Difference between vertical integration and sandwich economics - and the importance of dominating horizontal layers at an industry scale for capturing profits and exerting control.
👉 Broader societal implications of shifting economic models, and the role of digital transformation in redefining value creation, capture, and distribution.
👉 The emergence of Artificial General Intelligence, and how it makes digital economics, organizational structures, and the essence of competition even more complex.
👉 Leadership methods (decentralized/ centralized) in an era of Sandwich Economics Contrary.
 
Topics /chapters
(00:00) Sandwich Economics: a New Era of Competition - Intro
(00:58) Introducing Sangeet
(02:23) All things Sandwich Economics
(10:26) Why is Sandwich Economics different from Vertical Integration?
(18:17) New Ways of Competing
(24:08) Playbook of Sandwich Economics and how is it different from enshittification?
(38:28) What are the antibodies?
(46:14) Where’s this evolving to?
(49:45) The emergence of AGI and the shape of markets
(55:41) Value Creation vs. Value Capture
 
Remember that you can always find transcripts and key highlights of the episode on our website: https://www.boundaryless.io/podcast/sangeet-choudary-3/
 
Episode recorded on August 7, 2023
 
Get in touch with Boundaryless:
Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at https://boundaryless.io/resou