Boundaryless Conversations podcast is about exploring the future of large scale organising by leveraging on technology, network effects and shaping narratives. We explore how platforms can help us play with a world in turmoil, change, and transformation: a world that is at the same time more interconnected and interdependent than ever but also more conflictual and rivalrous. 

Human organisations are today pressed by the need to reinvent themselves, in ways that are profoundly unclear and, at the same time exciting for the promises they bring.

This podcast is brought to you by Boundaryless, the company behind Platform Design Toolkit an open methodology to design strategies that mobilize ecosystems through scalable efficiencies and scalable learning.

https://www.boundaryless.io/resources/podcast

Boundaryless Conversations Podcast

Renowned author and complexity thinker Jennifer Garvey Berger, co-founder of Cultivating Leadership, joins us in this episode to explore how organisations can evolve by unlocking the mental traps that limit adaptive capacity.
She helps us reframe leadership as a practice that fosters engagement and thriving amid uncertainty, and guides us through why individual development is essential to creating truly functional and effective collectives.
She highlights gaps in organisations that often overlook the importance of actively attending to a team’s health, which harms the relationships and connections that hold systems together.
She shares a future-focused insight, stating that “organisations are not merely serving markets, but constantly co-creating them,” redefining the deep implications for how organisations define their purpose, value, and long-term responsibility.
This episode offers a powerful and timely reflection that embraces a more ecological and co-creative approach to organizing. Tune in.

Jennifer, widely known for her books “Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps” and “Changing on the Job”, has guided organisations worldwide in revisiting their mindtraps and reshaping traditional leadership.
In this episode, she continues to challenge conventional views of customer-centricity and urges organisations to recognise their role in shaping society and ecosystems, advocating for a purpose that is deeply embedded rather than merely performative.
On a timely note, she reflects on generational shifts in how people relate to work and meaning, alongside the rise of values-led business models that call for designing with longer horizons in mind.
She helps us stay present, emphasising it as essential for preparing for the future, and guides us in visualising and designing what it means to be a complexity-informed leader.

Key Highlights
👉 Value in complex systems is co-created and fluid - organisations must shift from simply "serving customer needs" to becoming conscious shapers of society.
👉 Younger generations are increasingly unwilling to invest their life force into organisations that prioritise profit over planetary purpose and human well-being.
👉 Leadership requires working with, not eliminating, conflict.
👉 Escaping cognitive mindtraps (like certainty, control, or simple stories) is essential for leaders navigating complexity and change.
👉 In complexity, defining and enacting value is a collective, recursive process - it’s shaped by individuals, teams, and ecosystems in continuous dialogue.
👉 Purpose in complexity-friendly organisations must be lived and systemic, not just performative; it's about genuine social contracts and ecosystem stewardship.
👉 True systemic change begins with slowing down, listening differently, and allowing space for emergence.

Topics /chapters
(00:00) 00:00 Leadership in Complexity: Purpose, Failure & Conflict - intro
(01:55) Introducing Jennifer Garvey Berger
(03:45) The Polarities in Leadership
(06:48) A new mindset at the Leadership Level
(08:54) Personal Pattern and Complex Ecosystems
(13:03) Operationalising individual and collective patterns
(16:49) The boundaries of leadership in an organization
(19:05) The “How” and the “What” to Addressing Complexity
(25:21) Organizational Readiness for Handling Complexity
(28:08) Are Purpose-Driven Markets the Future?
(42:37) Breadcrumbs and Suggestions

Remember that you can always find transcripts and key highlights of the episode on our website: https://www.boundaryless.io/podcast/garvey-jennifer 

Episode recorded on Jun 03, 2025

Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at https://boundaryless.io/resources/podcast

Get in touch with Boundaryless:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/boundaryless_
Website: https://boundaryless.io/contacts
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/boundaryless-pdt-3eo

Music
Music from Liosound / Walter Mobilio. Find his portfolio here: https://blss.io/Podcast-Music

#123 - Leadership in Complexity: Purpose, Failure & Conflict with Jennifer Garvey Berger

This episode frames the Boundaryless Conversation podcast: Simone Cicero, the original creator of the Platform Design Toolkit, and co-host and team-mate Stina Heikkilä present the main research questions that guide this exploration. 

Boundaryless Conversations podcast is about exploring the future of large scale organising by leveraging on technology, network effects and shaping narratives. We explore how platforms can help us play with a world in turmoil, change, and transformation: a world that is at the same time more interconnected and interdependent than ever but also more conflictual and rivalrous. 

Human organisations are today pressed by the need to reinvent themselves, in ways that are profoundly unclear and, at the same time exciting for the promises they bring.

This podcast is brought to you by Boundaryless, the company behind Platform Design Toolkit an open methodology to design strategies that mobilize ecosystems through scalable efficiencies and scalable learning.

Here are some important links mentioned in the conversation.

> The Platform Design Toolkit - Boundaryless website: www.platformdesigntoolkit.com 

> The white paper 2020 launch - Simone Cicero, New Foundations of Platform-Ecosystem Thinking https://stories.platformdesigntoolkit.com/new-foundations-for-platforms-in-the-2020-d785276c390e 

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

Liosound

Opening episode: Exploring the future of organising at scale with Boundaryless conversations

In this episode, we have a boundaryless conversation with Arthur Brock, chief architect of Holochain. Holochain is an alternative to blockchain for running fully Peer-to-Peer distributed applications and is shaping the social dynamics of our emerging post-industrial economy. 

In the show we widely cover the concept of Unenclosable carriers and how new technologies that are more inherently contextual and agent centred - instead of universal and global consensus-based - may open up new possibilities for coordination and organising, enabling governance through feedback loops. 

Here are some important links from the conversation:

> Arthur Brock, The Future of Governance is not Governments https://medium.com/metacurrency-project/the-future-of-governance-is-not-governments-9c894e17b1cd
> Arthur Brock, Unenclosable Carriers and the Future of Communication, https://medium.com/holochain/unenclosable-carriers-and-the-future-of-communication-4ac6045ac894
> Holochain: https://holochain.org/
> Holo Host: https://holo.host/
> Affordance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance

Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/podcast 

Music by liosound.
Recorded on March 10th 2020

Ep. 01 Arthur Brock - Rewiring the technology to rewire the way we organise

In this episode, we have a boundaryless conversation with James Currier one of Silicon Valley’s foremost experts in growth and network effects. James is a four-time CEO of VC backed companies and a pioneer of user-generated models, viral marketing, A/B testing, crowdsourcing, and myriad of other growth techniques that have since been adopted by nearly all technology companies. In 2015, James co-founded NFX, a $150M early-stage venture capital firm focused on network effect businesses along with Pete Flint and Gigi Levy Weiss. 

In this conversation - which was amazingly insightful - we explore the real and so far unseen boundaries of the transition towards an economy more heavily based on marketplaces and market-networks, and how this transformation both shapes and is shaped by the major shifts and challenges that are currently emerging in the global society, including environmental, social, political, regulatory. 

We talk about the need for strong and charismatic leaders to steward these shifts, as well as the need to re-train people to gain the right competencies to deal with an increasingly digital, networked economy and transforming industries. 

Here are some important links from the conversation:

> Ben Evans’ presentation “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants” during the World Economic Forum in January 2020, https://www.ben-evans.com/presentations 

> Simone Cicero: “Why the Next Paradigm Shift may not be Technological”, https://stories.platformdesigntoolkit.com/paradigm-shift-regulation-af48b87a0eeb 

> Ben Thompson, The End of the Beginning, https://stratechery.com/2020/the-end-of-the-beginning/

> Niall Ferguson (2017), The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35629744-the-square-and-the-tower

> Libra cryptocurrency, https://libra.org/en-US/

> Lambda school, https://lambdaschool.com/

> Incredible health, https://www.incrediblehealth.com/

> Hire.com, https://www.peoplefluent.com/ 

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

Music by liosound.
Recorded on March 18th 2020

Ep. 02 James Currier - Unveiling the math behind society (and what to do about it)

In this episode, we have a boundaryless conversation with Tomas Diez, a Venezuelan Urbanist specialized in digital fabrication and its implications on the future of cities and society. He is the co-founder and director of Fab Lab Barcelona at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) and is a founding partner of the Fab City Global Initiative. 

In our conversation with Tomas, we explore the democratization of the production of goods, mainly through technological progress and open knowledge sharing, and how this might affect the evolution of platform-enabled ecosystem driven production. We ask Tomas - through the lens of this transformation - what new subjectivities and constituents are empowered to organize in ways that are different, whether synergistic or integrated, with current globalization and digitalization trends. Of course, we cannot avoid touching on the changing landscape of risk and policy-making, as we connect with Tomas in the midst of the global pandemic. We also talk about the future of education and the need to reconsider Western-centric values and ways of knowing.

Here are some important links from the conversation:

> Fab City: Locally Productive, Globally Connected, https://fab.city/

> Wendell Berry (1977): The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/146191.The_Unsettling_of_America

> Peter Noak (2010): Sex, Bombs and Burgers, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7829730-sex-bombs-and-burgers

> Raj Patel, Jason W. Moore (2017): A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet,
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34525475-a-history-of-the-world-in-seven-cheap-things

Dr. Zachary Stein on education in a changing technology landscape, http://www.zakstein.org/

Ep. 03 Tomas Diez - From Fab Cities to Fab Citizens: remaking organising

In this episode, we have a Boundaryless Conversation with John Robb, the owner and principal analyst for the monthly Global Guerrillas Report, that covers the intersection of War, Politics, and Technology.  Its goal is to provide people with the frameworks needed to make sense of our relentlessly chaotic world. In other words, John helps people think clearly at a time when that kind of help is in short supply.  

In our conversation with John, we explore how the rapid power shifts we're witnessing towards open source, and self-organizing networks are going to change the way we organize society and the economy.

We touched upon the fact that the emergent future of organizing may not disrupt or obsolete the existing markets, but rather coexist, and that there's no way we can get away with ignoring the question concerning technology as society literally "becomes a technological artefact" as John said.

Here are some important links from the conversation:
> John’s patreon page https://www.patreon.com/johnrobb
> David Ronfeld, Tribes, Institutions, Markets and Networks, https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2005/P7967.pdf
> John Arquilla, David Ronfeldt (eds): Networks and Netwars, The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy, https://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1382.html
> Marshall McLuhan, whose ideas were frequently mentioned in the conversation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan
> The Cynefin Framework for Simple, Complicated, Complex and Chaotic domains, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7oz366X0-8
> Examples of games mentioned that allow modifications to be developed in the kind of open-source community: Fallout and Skyrim: https://fallout.bethesda.net/en/; https://elderscrolls.bethesda.net/en/skyrim
> Code Academy, https://www.codecademy.com/
> Cameo, a new platform for getting personalised messages from celebrities, https://www.cameo.com/
> The company where John in 1996 wrote the report “personal broadcast networks” https://go.forrester.com/
> How to Run a City Like Amazon and Other Fables, a multi-author future fiction imagining cities being run by different companies https://shop.meatspacepress.com/product/how-to-run-a-city-like-amazon-and-other-fables

Music by liosound.
Recorded on March 26th 2020

Ep.04 John Robb -Beyond markets: sense-making and organising, in a world of open networks

Boundaryless helps global customers with Business Strategy and Organization Design for the age of Ecosystems.
We do it by creating openly accessible frameworks and by supporting a community of organizations, institutions, and individuals through workshops, training, and consulting services. 

In this space we host all our audio recordings, including the Boundaryless Conversations podcast, a show focused on exploring the future of large scale organising by leveraging on technology, network effects and shaping narratives. We explore how platforms can help us play with a world in turmoil, change, and transformation: a world that is at the same time more interconnected and interdependent than ever but also more conflictual and rivalrous. 

We used to be online at platformdesigntoolkit.com... now find us on our new website: www.boundaryless.io!

Email: hello@boundaryless.io