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

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

In this episode, we talk to Ana Andjelic, a Strategy Executive and Doctor of Sociology working on business strategy, marketing, and organizational transformation. Ana has worked with top global advertising agencies and has also worked on the brand-side as a chief marketing executive. In the context of the collaborative economy boom of early 2010, Ana wrote thoughtful reflections on the Guardian and other news outlets. She recently came back to our attention for her brand new newsletter “The Sociology of Business” where she explores the transformation of retail, modern brand building, and how new social and cultural patterns impact the business.

We talk about the changing relationship between brands and consumers, what role culture plays in this transformation, and how technology can help - but never fully replace - human interaction. Our conversation also included in-depth reflections about how brands are reacting to the current context of COVID-19 and about the increasing need for empathy and social responsibility in these turbulent times.

Read more on our Medium story here https://medium.com/@meedabyte/4838a55049f5?source=friends_link&sk=d8962629a1a49d42fe53cff96007b950

Here are some important links from the conversation:

> Ana’s insightful newsletter “The Sociology of Business”, https://andjelicaaa.substack.com/
> Ana’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/andjelicaaa

Brands mentioned that are engaging closely with customer communities:
> Glossier, an example of a platform for the community activity that is happening around the beauty products: https://www.glossier.com/, https://intothegloss.com/
> Rapha for cycling communities: https://www.rapha.cc/ 
> Track smith running brand: https://www.tracksmith.com/
> Outdoor voices:https://www.outdoorvoices.com/

Other topics mentioned:
> Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/399136.Imagined_Communities
> Some concepts from Japanese culture inspiring the west: Omotenashi, Kintsugi, Wabi-Sabi
> Demna Gvasalia, Georgian fashion designer, currently the creative director of Balenciaga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demna_Gvasalia

Music by liosound.
Recorded on March 27th 2020

Ep. 05 Ana Andjelic - Brands in transition: the sociology of ecosystems

In this with Michel Bauwens, we explore both the Epistemological and Political/Regulatory layers of the transition from the “old” to the “new” ways of organising society. We dig into concepts like “trans-national institutions” and explore the changes we could expect in both regional and international governance of the economy and society. 

Michel Bauwens is founder and director of the P2P Foundation, research director of CommonsTransition.org (a platform for policy development aimed toward a society of the Commons) and a founding member of the Commons Strategies Group. 

Michel is a real lighthouse when it comes to collaborative, commons-based production models and works tirelessly since more than a decade in collaboration with a global group of researchers in the exploration of peer production, governance, and property.

Here are some important links from the conversation:

> Michel Bauwens, Corona and the Commons http://liminal.news.greenhostpreview.nl/2020/03/23/corona-and-the-commons/

> Michel Bauwens and Jose Ramos, “The pulsation of the commons: The temporal context for the cosmo-local transition” (Draft), https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sHhuecKxfB8HRH8o9aOfdlKNqaPQ8lc91502FXXv8e4/edit#heading=h.99i7fcsrn7tf 

> Bologna regulation for the care and regeneration of the urban commons, https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Bologna_Regulation_for_the_Care_and_Regeneration_of_Urban_Commons

> P2P Accounting for Planetary Survival - Commons Transition, https://commonstransition.org/p2p-accounting-for-planetary-survival/

> REPORTING 3.0, https://reporting3.org/

> Robert I. Moore (2000), The First European Revolution: 970-1215, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/712195.The_First_European_Revolution

> Bernard A. Lietaer, The Mystery of Money, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8198838-the-mystery-of-money

> Material flow accounting, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_flow_accounting

> Resources, events, agents (accounting model), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resources,_events,_agents_(accounting_model)

> David Ronfeldt, Tribes, Institutions, Markets and Networks, https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2005/P7967.pdf

> Jamie Wheal in Rebel Wisdom: War on Sensemaking 3, The Infinite Game, https://youtu.be/mQstRd7opv4

> French land trust “Terre des Liens”, https://terredeliens.org/

> Bernard Stiegler, The Neganthropocene, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40203892-the-neganthropocene

Music by liosound.
Recorded on March 31st 2020

Ep. 06 Michel Bauwens - Commons-based peer production at the edge of a chaotic transition

In this Boundaryless Conversation, we talk with Bill Fischer, Professor of Innovation Management at IMD Business School in Lausanne. Bill co-founded and co-directs the IMD program on Driving Strategic Innovation, in cooperation with the Sloan School of Management at MIT and also authors a regular column for Forbes.com entitled “The Ideas Business”. 

Together with Bill, we’re exploring how incumbent organizations are likely to respond to pressures like plummeting transaction costs and the need to extend their organizational models across boundaries, digging into the cultural, organizational and leadership resistance that this transformation may encounter.  

We talk quite a lot about Haier Group, a world-leading pioneer embracing a culture of entrepreneurship and ecosystem enablement. If you’re interested in learning more about this case, here are two opportunities for you:

> A Webinar on the Haier Story hosted on 29th of April, offering an introductory discussion on Haier's Group’s organizational approach Rendanheyi. Sign up here or follow the live streaming on the Boundaryless YouTube channel. 

> An upcoming Haier Certified 3 Half Day online course that Bill Fischer and Simone Cicero will facilitate online on June 16-17-18



Here are some important links from the conversation:

More about the Haier model: 

> William A. Fischer, Umberto Lago and Fang Liu: Reinventing Giants: https://www.imd.org/research-knowledge/books/reinventing-giants/ 

> William A. Fischer: How Haier gives insights into China’s radical transformation - From autarky to everywhere, https://www.imd.org/research-knowledge/articles/how-haier-gives-insights-into-chinas-radical-transformation/ 

> Simone’s take on the PDT blog: “An Entrepreneurial, Ecosystem Enabling Organization - What’s emerging from understanding Haier Group”, https://stories.platformdesigntoolkit.com/an-entrepreneurial-ecosystem-enabling-organization-c35eaf5acd9c

> Corporate Rebels: “RenDanHeYi: The Organizational Model Defining The Future Of Work?” https://corporate-rebels.com/rendanheyi-forum/



Stuff mentioned in the conversation:

> Charlie Fine, “Nail it, Scale it, Sail it”, https://www.jungle-mountain-ocean.com/about 

> Oticon hearing aid company in Denmark, https://www.oticon.com/

> Jos de Blok, founder of the nurse-led organisation Buurztorg: https://www.buurtzorg.com/about-us/history/

> Stora Enso, the Finish company with roots in the 14th century: https://www.storaenso.com/ 

> ABB, https://new.abb.com/

> John Hagel’s writings on Edge Perspectives, on ideas of scalable learning and the difference between the scalable economy of scalable efficiency, https://edgeperspectives.typepad.com/edge_perspectives/

> Andy Boynton, Bill Fischer, William Bole, The Idea Hunter: How to Find the Best Ideas and Make them Happen, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10553258-the-idea-hunter 

Music by liosound.
Recorded on March 30th 2020

Ep 07 Bill Fischer - Leadership as Architecting: Transforming Organisations into Thriving Ecosystems

Stowe describes his calling as “the ecology of work and the anthropology of the future”. He’s founder of Work Futures, where he explores critical themes of the future of work, and top writer in Economics, Leadership and Futures on Medium. He also writes extensively about work technologies and serves as a Gigaom editor.

In our conversation, we talk about how platforms contribute to changing the relationship between consumers and producers and how this — in turn — leads to re-shaping organizations, as firms optimize for a low transaction cost economy. We also talk about fairness and the importance of distributed governance to be transparent and reliable, allowing the players in an ecosystem to operate without constantly “covering their backs”.

How to find Stowe Boyd and his work:

> Medium: https://medium.com/@stoweboyd

> Work Futures: https://workfutures.org/

Mentions and references:

> Rent the Runway: https://www.renttherunway.com/

> Amoeba Management | Management Philosophy | KYOCERA, https://global.kyocera.com/philosophy/amoeba.html

> Stanley McChrystal, Chris Fussell, Tantum Collins, David Silverman (2015): Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex Worldhttps://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22529127-team-of-teams

> Carlota Perez social and economic impact of technical change (including S curves): http://www.carlotaperez.org/

>Follow the work of Ben Evans and Ben Thompson: https://www.ben-evans.com/newsletter; https://stratechery.com/

> "In all chaos, there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order." - Carl Jung, https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/carl_jung_157280

> Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic and Cindy Gallop in HBR on female leadership https://hbr.org/2020/04/7-leadership-lessons-men-can-learn-from-women

> Participatory City: http://www.participatorycity.org/about

Music by liosound.
Recorded on April 3rd 2020

Ep. 08 Stowe Boyd - Ecosystemic Organizations and the Future of Work

This is a “checkpoint” episode where we talk to Lisa about what we’ve been discovering so far in the research for the Whitepaper and get her valuable take focusing on the role of incumbents in adapting to a fast-changing world. She talks about the emerging space between the “no more” and “not yet”. In this in-between space where most of the potential to re-invent organizing seems to lay, ecosystems appear to be a candidate driver of transformation for incumbents, although questions abound regarding their maturity. 

> Follow Lisa Gansky on Twitter: https://twitter.com/instigating

> Subscribe to “Instigate this” curated by Lisa: https://paper.li/instigating?edition_id=1f138460-82ac-11ea-a01c-0cc47a0d1605#/

Some references mentioned in the show:

> Marc Andreesen, “It’s time to build”, https://a16z.com/2020/04/18/its-time-to-build/

> Slavoj Zizek on Coronavirus: "Things will not go back to normal", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfWIMPredyI&feature=youtu.be

> Ichak Adizes, Organisational Life Cycle: https://adizes.com/lifecycle/

> Reporting 3.0 “Maturation Matrix”: https://medium.com/@r3dot0/introducing-the-r3-0-maturation-matrix-6652047a0ba8

Music by liosound.
Recorded on April 20th 2020

Checkpoint episode with Lisa Gansky - Ecosystems: between the "no more" and the "not yet"

In our conversation with Daniel, we talk about the interplays between technology and landscape, between the virtual and the analogue world, and we explore what kind of new experiments and institutions that may emerge — and what new constituencies will likely gain a key role in organising at scale — for the re-regionalisation of the economy, which is such an important step of society’s regeneration. 
How to find and support Daniel’s work:
> Medium Blog: https://medium.com/@designforsustainability
> Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/DanielChristianWahl?fan_landing=true
> Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrDCWahl
> LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-christian-wahl-phd-51a54616/
> Regeneration rising Youtube conversations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zBxHnVsuus
> Facebook groups: https://www.facebook.com/regenerativecultures/, https://www.facebook.com/Ecological-Consciousness-567337650286414/ , https://www.facebook.com/groups/920150431523616/about/
Mentions and references:
> Daniel Wahl, Midwives of the Regeneration: On the fertile edges of the more beautiful world, https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/midwives-of-the-regeneration-on-the-fertile-edges-of-the-more-beautiful-world-4a28a9c6496f
> Daniel Wahl, Salutogenic Cities & Bioregional Regeneration (Part I of II), https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/salutogenic-cities-bioregional-regeneration-part-i-of-ii-2772a13bad9a
> Jung’s cognitive functions, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungian_cognitive_functions
> Joanna Macy, https://www.joannamacy.net/main
> Janine Benyus: “life creates conditions conducive to life”, https://www.ted.com/talks/janine_benyus_biomimicry_s_surprising_lessons_from_nature_s_engineers/transcript?language=en
> Ecolise: https://www.ecolise.eu/
> Planetary Health Alliance, https://www.planetaryhealthalliance.org/mission
> Wendell Berry, the Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, https://www.amazon.com/Unsettling-America-Culture-Agriculture/dp/0871568772
> Regenesis Group: https://regenesisgroup.com/
> Bayo Akomolafe: “times are urgent so let’s slow down” http://bayoakomolafe.net/project/the-times-are-urgent-lets-slow-down/
> Rebel Wison, Sense-Making the Corona virus outbreak, with Jamie Wheal, Diane Musho Hamilton: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKDWmKL7xCk
> Yuk Hui, Cosmotechnics as Cosmopolistics, https://www.e-flux.com/journal/86/161887/cosmotechnics-as-cosmopolitics/
> Thích Nhất Hạnh (interbeing): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Nh%E1%BA%A5t_H%E1%BA%A1nh

Music by liosound.
Recorded on April 06th

Ep.09 Daniel Wahl - Organising in Nested Systems

In this boundaryless conversation we speak with Indy Johar, architect and co-founder of Project 00 and most recently Dark Matter Labs (see his full bio here: https://about.me/indy.johar).
Indy is really a great thinker when it comes to going beyond the “corner shop” size social transformation initiatives to explore the next generation of institutions  living at the edge between public, open and private.

We explore what he thinks will happen to organising, institution-building and human potential, as we move beyond an information age towards an era where building capabilities for antifragile institutions is key.


Find out more about Indy and his work:

>About Indy Johar, https://about.me/indy.johar 

> Dark Matter Labs and its distributed team: https://darkmatterlabs.org/Team

> Dark Matter Labs collaboration with EIT Climate-KIC on Longtermism: Reorienting mindsets towards long-term thinking and acting: https://darkmatterlabs.org/Longtermism-Reorienting-mindsets-towards-long-term-thinking-and-acting 

> Medium series of Longtermism, https://medium.com/futures-in-long-termism/futures-in-long-termism-95f64710f9b2

> “Letters from Amsterdam” on how they’re organised: https://provocations.darkmatterlabs.org/amsterdam-2019-2020-letter-to-our-future-dbd67a035ffe

> Indy Johar, Good work is the answer…: https://provocations.darkmatterlabs.org/there-is-nothing-wrong-with-the-consumer-society-as-an-idea-3c408b17ce 

> Trees as Infrastructure, https://darkmatterlabs.org/Trees-as-Infrastructure-Rewilding-urban-forests

Other Mentions and References:

> John Vervaeke, Ep. 1 - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - Introduction
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54l8_ewcOlY

> Danny Dorling, Slowdown (2020): The End of the Great Acceleration—and Why It's Good for the Planet, the Economy, and Our Lives: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B086LK5KSL/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Music by liosound.
Recorded on April 29th

Ep. 10 Indy Johar - Redrawing the Human Development thesis for the 21st Century

In this episode we talk to Joost Minnaar, co-founder of the blog Corporate-Rebels.com in 2015. Joost travels the world researching progressive organisations, blogs about the discoveries he makes and advises on workplace issues. Joost is the co-author of the book 'Corporate Rebels, Make Work More Fun' (2020), winner of the Thinkers50 Radar Award (2019) and a Doctoral Candidate at the Amsterdam Business Research Institute (VU University, Amsterdam). We also have the pleasure to collaborate with Joost and his colleagues in our work on the Haier Group model (check up our upcoming webinar: https://platformdesigntoolkit.com/adopting-haier-model-webinar/). 

In our conversation with Joost, we get quite practical about the three “fundamental problems” of organising at scale, like he frames it, and how organisations tackle them. We loved how this episode helped us nail down some key thoughts into discernable patterns, drawing on Joost's rich library of experiences from researching so many great organisations.

Read our Medium publication to access our key insights and the interview transcript.

Here are some important links from the conversation:

Work by Joost and Corporate Rebels:

> Corporate Rebels Blog: https://corporate-rebels.com/

> Joost Minnaar on Twitter: https://twitter.com/joost_minnaar

>Joost Minnaar, Corporate Rebels, “Solving Organizational Complexity With Simplicity”:
https://corporate-rebels.com/how-fast-can-you-scale/

> Joost Minnaar, Corporate Rebels. “How To Organize A Large Company Without Middle Management”: https://corporate-rebels.com/how-to-organize-a-large-organization-without-middle-management/

> Pim de Morree, Corporate Rebels, “A Radical And Proven Approach To Self-Management” (Ner Group), https://corporate-rebels.com/ner-group

Other mentions and references

> Geoffrey West, Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies: https://www.amazon.com/Scale-Universal-Innovation-Sustainability-Organisms/dp/1594205582

> Geoffrey West profile https://www.santafe.edu/people/profile/geoffrey-west

> Principle of least action, http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Principle_of_least_action

> Deborah Frieze, From Scaling Up to Scaling Across: https://medium.com/in-praise-of-scaling-down/from-scaling-up-to-scaling-across-ed5092acd22f

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

Recorded on May 4th 2020

Ep. 11 Joost Minnaar - Tackling the Fundamental Problems of Organising at Scale

In this episode, Simone Cicero is again joined by a special co-host and former guest on the podcast — Bill Fischer — Professor of Innovation Management at IMD Business School in Lausanne.

They talk to Martin Reeves, Managing Director in the San Francisco office of BCG and Chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, BCG’s think tank on business strategy and co-author of the book “Your Strategy Needs a Strategy”. Martin is also currently leading research on the post-COVID era, winning the ’20s, competing on imagination, corporate vitality, purpose of purpose, strategy and artificial intelligence, competing on the rate of learning, diversity and performance, innovation strategy, organizational vitality and the humanity of corporations.

The conversation takes a deep dive into what it means for a business to become “ecosystemic” and compete in the 2020s, and about the bankruptcy of the current ways of doing “strategy” in a world in deep and continuous transformation. Martin also speaks widely about the renewed importance of imagination in organizations and about the need to compete on the rate of learning, combining human ingenuity with the power of machines and much more.


Read our story on Medium https://medium.com/@meedabyte/94f032785ab3 to access our key insights and the interview transcript for the episode.

Here are some important links from the conversation:

To find out more about Martin’s work

> https://twitter.com/MartinKReeves

> Your Strategy Needs a Strategy by Martin Reeves, Knut Haanæs, and Janmejaya Sinha: https://www.bcg.com/publications/collections/your-strategy-needs-strategy/intro.aspx

References and mentions

> Martin Reeves, Fortune 50, October 2019. “How the Fortune Future 50 identifies companies with long-term growth potential”: https://fortune.com/2019/10/21/future-50-best-stocks-for-long-term-growth-2019/

> Martin Reeves, Ming Zeng and Amin Venjara, HBR, June 2015. “The Self-tuning enterprise”: https://hbr.org/2015/06/the-self-tuning-enterprise

> Adam M. Brandenburger, Barry J. Nalebuff, Co-Opetition: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0385479506/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_cHC3Eb88TT1DN 

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: www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/music

Recorded on May 18th 2020

Ep. 13 Martin Reeves - Remaking the Case for Strategy in an Interdependent World

In this episode, we’re having a boundaryless conversation with Joe Norman, a complex systems scientist researching systemic risk and precaution in large-scale systems. Joe explores strategies for uncertainty, complex systems engineering, pattern formation in biological and social systems. Joe’s work brings amazing insights to creating new organizational development models that could be better equipped to deal with the asymmetric risk factors that we foresee these days, in light of rising complexity of the human society and of the destabilization of its support systems. 

We talk about decentralization and localism as a way to deflate such risks while changing the landscape of organising and influencing its salience. Joe underlines the importance of tackling challenges at the appropriate scale, applying a multi-scale variety lens. Our conversation further points in the direction of systemic health-embeddedness and the principle of subsidiarity and the precautionary principle as providing adequate constraints, rather than directions, for systems to evolve.

Remember that you can find the show notes and transcripts from all our episodes on our Medium publication. 

To find out more about Joe’s work:

> Joe’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/normonics

> Email: joe.w.norman@gmail.com

> Website: http://jwnorman.com/

Other mentions and references:

> Balaji Srinivasan On The Argument For Decentralization - Part 1, Pomp Podcast #295: https://youtu.be/SU6H-5kA0FA 

> Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture: 

https://www.amazon.com/Unsettling-America-Culture-Agriculture/dp/0871568772



> 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: www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/music



Recorded on May 25th 2020

Ep. 14 Joe Norman - Organizations as Architectures for Complexity

In this episode, we’re speaking to Nicolas Colin, co-founder & director of The Family, a pan-European investment firm founded in 2013 and headquartered in London. Nicolas publishes an extremely valuable newsletter European Straits about entrepreneurship, finance, strategy and policy, with a European perspective. He’s also the author of three books, one of which is Hedge: A Greater Safety Net for the Entrepreneurial Age and member of the board of directors at Radio France, and a former commissioner at CNIL (the French personal data protection authority). Nicolas also contributes to several other outlets, such as co-host at Nouveau Départ with his wife Laetitia Vitaud (in French), and as a columnist at Sifted. 



In this conversation, we try to unpack why Nicolas thinks the current crisis is going to accelerate the transition to what he has recently called a more “mature entrepreneurial economy” and what he means with the Entrepreneurial Age is, a concept he uses to describe the networked computing-powered world where individuals - or users - are more important than having fixed assets on a balance sheet.  We also talk about the balance between building organizations based on attracting outsiders and the need to be resilient to sudden drops in users, which some tech companies seem to get wrong.



Remember that you can find the show notes and transcripts from all our episodes on our  Medium publication: https://medium.com/@meedabyte/718c066b19bc?source=friends_link&sk=5cfc8fe1a321d1bbc721c7f34b627eae

To find out more about Nicolas Colin’s work:

> Twitter: https://twitter.com/Nicolas_Colin

> Newsletter: https://europeanstraits.substack.com/

> Nicolas Colin (2018). Hedge: A Greater Safety Net for the Entrepreneurial Age: https://www.amazon.com/Hedge-Greater-Safety-Net-Entrepreneurial/dp/1718917082



Other references and mentions:

> Structural Shifts podcast by Aperture, “Previewing the post-pandemic World”, with Nicolas Colin, Laetitia Vitaud and Ian Charles Stewart: https://medium.com/aperture-hub/previewing-the-post-pandemic-world-17-7be38279c2c7

> Babak Nivi coined the term “Entrepreneurial Age” (2013): https://venturehacks.com/the-entrepreneurial-age

> Carlota Perez’ work on technological revolutions: http://www.carlotaperez.org/

> Balaji Srinivasan On The Argument For Decentralization - Part 1, Pomp Podcast #295: https://youtu.be/SU6H-5kA0FA 

> Fernand Braudel, on Civilisation and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, in 3 volumes: https://www.amazon.com/Civilization-Capitalism-15th-18th-Century-Vol/dp/0520081145:

> 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: www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/music

Recorded on May 29th 2020

Ep. 15 Nicolas Colin - The Entrepreneurial Age: Networks and a fragmenting world

In this episode we have two leading platform thinkers on the show: Marshall Van Alstyne, Questrom Chair Professor at Boston University and Geoffrey Parker, professor of engineering at the Thayer School of Dartmouth College. They are both visiting scholars at the MIT Initiative for the Digital Economy and co-chair the annual MIT Platform Summit (see references below)

Marshall Van Alstyne and Geoffrey Parker - together with Sangeet Choudary - are the authors of Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy - and How to Make Them Work for You, from 2016. As originators of the concept of the inverted firm, they were further joint winners of the Thinkers50 2019 Digital Thinking Award. 

In this conversation, we talk about what democratising access to data means for the ability of players in a platform-ecosystem context to innovate and how regulation should be conceived participatory and ex-ante. With creating human value as the North star, Marshall and Geoffrey ponder that we might want to see the creation of a Magna Carta of citizens rights for how we should be able to operate and influence on powerful platforms.

Remember that you can find the show notes and transcripts from all our episodes on our own Medium publication https://tinyurl.com/boundaryless-medium

Here are some important links from the conversation

Find out more about Marshall and Geoffrey’s work:

> Geoffrey G. Parker, Marshall W. Van Alstyne, Sangeet Paul Choudary, Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy and How to Make Them Work for You, 2016. https://www.amazon.com/Platform-Revolution-Networked-Markets-Transforming/dp/0393249131
> MIT Platform Strategy Summit, 2020 edition taking place virtually on 8 July: http://ide.mit.edu/events/2020-mit-platform-strategy-summit
> Platform Revolution - Offers an operator's manual for building platforms (easy read)  https://www.amazon.com/Platform-Revolution-Networked-Markets-Transforming/dp/0393354350/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1591806248&sr=1-1
> Digital Platforms & Antitrust - Categorizes the harms from platforms, critiques existing solutions, and offers one path forward (easy read).  https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3608397
> Pipelines, Platforms & New The Rules of Strategy - Tells how strategy differs from products to platforms (Harvard Business Review "Must Read" - easy read).  https://hbr.org/2016/04/pipelines-platforms-and-the-new-rules-of-strategy
> Platform Ecosystems: How Developers Invert the Firm - Provides a proof that platforms become "inverted firms," moving production from inside to outside, once network effects become large enough (MISQ Best Paper - hard read). https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2861574 
> The Social Efficiency of Fairness - Provides proof that treating people fairly increases rates of innovation (mimeo - hard read)  https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1514137

Other mentions and references:

>  Simon Wardley on the Innovate-Leverage-Componentize (ILC) cycle. 
Part I: https://blog.gardeviance.org/2014/03/understanding-ecosystems-part-i-of-ii.html; 
Part II: https://blog.gardeviance.org/2015/08/on-platforms-and-ecosystems.html
> Simone Cicero, “Long Tails, Aggregators & Infrastructures”: https://stories.platformdesigntoolkit.com/long-tails-aggregators-infrastructures-bdf84e32531d
> Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, “5 Economists Redefining… Everything. Oh Yes, And They’re Women”. Mariana Mazzucato on the role of government investment in early innovations: https://www-forbes-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.forbes.com/sites/avivahwittenbergcox/2020/05/31/5-economists-redefining-everything--oh-yes-and-theyre-women/amp/

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: www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/music

Recorded on June 10th 2020

Ep.16 Marshall Van Alstyne and Geoffrey Parker - Regulating pervasive platforms

Today we’re speaking to Jeremiah Owyang, founding partner of the San Francisco based research firm Kaleido Insights, where he focuses on how disruptive technologies—such as social media, collaborative economy, autonomous world, blockchain and more— impact the relevance of corporations. 

Jeremiah is well recognized by both the tech industry and the media for his grounded approach to deriving insights through rigorous research.and is frequently quoted in top-tier publications, has given a TED talk and was featured in the “Who’s Who” in the Silicon Valley Business Journal. His Twitter feed was named one of the top feeds by Time. He is also the Founder of Crowd Companies, an innovation club for Fortune 500 companies.

In our conversation with Jeremiah, we explore some of the pre-existing conditions in the world - always through a tech lens - that have been amplified by the pandemic and other recent disruptive events, leading to some sort of awakening in Silicon Valley about the moral duties of tech companies and more in general what companies are actually supposed to produce for the world. 

Remember that you can find the show notes and transcripts from all our episodes on our  Medium publication. https://medium.com/@meedabyte/4142f4870d14?source=friends_link&sk=c285582c50ac503b4ae7005a14d8e4d9 

Here are some important links from the conversation

Find out more about Jeremiah’s work:

> Jeremiah’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jowyang

> Kaleido Insights, “Applying Covid-19 Urgencies to Kaleido Insights’ Five Research Themes”: https://www.kaleidoinsights.com/applying-covid-19-urgencies-to-kaleido-insights-five-research-themes/

Other references and mentions:

> The Verge, “Amazon bans police from using its facial recognition technology for the next year”:
https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/10/21287101/amazon-rekognition-facial-recognition-police-ban-one-year-ai-racial-bias 

> Ben Evans, presentation at the WEF 2020 and an update June 2020: https://www.ben-evans.com/presentations

> Participatory City, http://www.participatorycity.org/the-illustrated-guide

> Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture: 
https://www.amazon.com/Unsettling-America-Culture-Agriculture/dp/0871568772

> Reporting 3.0: https://www.r3-0.org/

> Wisdo: https://wisdo.com/index.html

> Clubhouse: https://www.joinclubhouse.com/, https://www.wired.com/story/what-is-clubhouse-why-does-silicon-valley-care/

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: www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/music

Recorded on June 19th 2020

Ep. 17 Jeremiah Owyang - The Future of Platforms in the midst of Silicon Valley's moral reckoning

In this episode we have a conversation with John Bunch, Lead Organizational Designer and Adviser to the CEO Tony Hsieh at Zappos. John joined Zappos.com in 2009 as a Software Developer and moved on to lead the Public API team. John was the Implementation Lead during Zappos’ shift to Holacracy and self-organization. Coming out of the rollout of Holacracy, John transitioned to leading internal infrastructure and systems design.

In the conversation, we talk about how Zappos - through the application of Holacracy and marked-based dynamics - is becoming a thriving entrepreneurial organization. We use the city as a metaphor for the high diversity, high productivity organisation that Zappos strives to be, based on shared enabling services and micro-enterprising. 

We also explore the concept of the “triangle of accountability” that guides the organizational development and the specific hiring process that helps make sure that people who join the company are aligned with the values and ways of working applied in Zappos.

Remember that you can find the show notes and transcripts from all our episodes on our on Medium publication. 
https://medium.com/@meedabyte/a2aaa916663e?source=friends_link&sk=3c1f7e1c2614731316fb0700295f982a

Here are some important links from the conversation:

Find out more about John’s work

> LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-bunch/

> Zappos: https://www.zappos.com/

> Zappos Expertise: https://expertise.zappos.com/

Other references and mentions:

> Tony Hsieh, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose.  https://www.amazon.com/Delivering-Happiness-Profits-Passion-Purpose/dp/0446576220

> Zappos Adaptive: https://www.zappos.com/e/adaptive

> Nassim Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, https://www.amazon.com/Delivering-Happiness-Profits-Passion-Purpose/dp/0446576220

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: www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/music

Recorded on June 11th 2020

Ep.18 John Bunch - Building Complex Organizations through simple constraints: Zappos

In this episode, we have our two dear guests Lisa Gansky — the eternal entrepreneur, great thinker and our long term advisor — and Bill Fischer, professor at IMD in Lausanne with whom we’ve developed the very first Rendanheyi Masterclass based on Haier’s revolutionary organisational model and a partner in our long term research on the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Enabling Organization.

In our conversation, we wanted to pick their brains on the key theses emerging from the research for our upcoming 2020 Whitepaper, such as acknowledging marketplace pervasiveness, seeing a systemic shift happening towards health and redrawing the human development thesis to reverse the trend that machine development has long outpaced human development.

Following an initial framing, Bill and Lisa take turns in providing amazing reflections on where the world seems to be headed, from an organisational, systems and cultural perspective and related to business ecosystems and innovation.

Remember that you can find the show notes and transcripts from all our episodes on our on Medium publication. 
https://medium.com/@meedabyte/f41cc070b1ce?source=friends_link&sk=33510264d062bcf4b2792a8cd54d2edf 

Here are some important links from the conversation

See the previous Podcast episodes with Lisa and Bill:

> Checkpoint episode with Lisa Gansky: Ecosystems - between the “no more” and the “not yet”, 
https://stories.platformdesigntoolkit.com/checkpoint-episode-with-lisa-gansky-ecosystems-between-the-no-more-and-the-not-yet-c183d21257c4

> Leadership as Architecting: Transforming Organisations into Thriving Ecosystems — with Bill Fischer. https://stories.platformdesigntoolkit.com/leadership-as-architecting-transforming-organisations-into-thriving-ecosystems-7-4af8dd0cf06c

Other references and mentions:
> Warren Bennis, 1998. The Temporary Society: What is Happening to Business and Family Life in America Under the Impact of Accelerating Change. https://www.amazon.com/Temporary-Society-Happening-Accelerating-Management/dp/0787943312  
> Structural Shifts podcast by Aperture Hub, with Rita Gunther McGrath, Seeing Around Corners (#19): https://medium.com/aperture-hub/seeing-around-corners-19-ec64b2260337
> Tessy Britton, “Universal Basic Everything” - .creating essential infrastructure for post Covid 19 neighbourhoods. https://medium.com/@TessyBritton/universal-basic-everything-f149afc4cef1
> Simone Cicero,  “An Entrepreneurial, Ecosystem Enabling Organization - What’s emerging from understanding Haier Group”. https://stories.platformdesigntoolkit.com/an-entrepreneurial-ecosystem-enabling-organization-c35eaf5acd9c
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: www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/music

Recorded on July 1st 2020

A Beacon for Future Explorations - Wrapping up Season 1 with Bill Fischer and Lisa Gansky

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