Outthinkers

In this special in-person conversation recorded at Adobe’s global headquarters , host Kaihan Krippendorff sits down with Malte Bernholz , Vice President of Strategy and Incubation at Adobe. Malte brings a unique lens, combining years of experience in consulting and technology leadership, to unpack what might be the most significant technological shift of our lifetime. Together, Kaihan and Malte ex...

Mark Crowley is a longtime financial services leader who led consistently top-performing teams over a 25-year career. He’s the author of Lead From the Heart and the newly released The Power of Employee Well-being, a frequent contributor to Fast Company , and host of the Lead From the Heart podcast. In 2013, Mark was the first to publicize Gallup’s finding that only 30% of U.S. employees were engag...

Eddie Fishman is a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, adjunct professor of International & Public Affairs, and author of Choke Points: How the Global Economy Became a Weapon of War . A former U.S. State Department strategist, he served on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff and Foreign Affairs Policy Board, and led Russia/Europe sanction...

Today we’re welcoming back our first-ever guest on the Outthinker Podcast, Scott Anthony—Senior Lecturer at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business and one of the world’s leading voices on innovation and transformation. Formerly a senior partner at Innosight, the consultancy founded by Clayton Christensen, Scott has spent decades helping global organizations navigate disruption, build strategic resili...

Adam Brotman is the former Chief Digital Officer of Starbucks and Co-CEO of J.Crew, and co‑author of the e‑book AI‑First: The Playbook for a Future‑Proof Business and Brand. At Starbucks, he helped create one of the most admired digital customer experiences in the world and was named Chief Digital Officer of the Year. Today, as co‑founder of Forum3, Adam helps executives navigate the next era of b...

Our guest today is Julia Austin—former senior leader at Akamai, VMware, and DigitalOcean, with decades of experience helping organizations make the leap from startup to scale. She’s also studied and guided countless founders as a professor at Harvard Business School. Julia now distills those lessons in her new book, After the Idea: What It Really Takes to Create and Scale a Startup . In this conve...

Martin Reeves is Chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute and author of The Imagination Machine and his newest book, Like: The Button That Changed the World . A prolific strategist and researcher, Martin is known for uncovering practical lessons from unexpected places and helping leaders rethink innovation for the real world. In this conversation, we trace the surprising story of the “like” button—...

Kurt Miscinski is the co-founder, CEO, and President of Cerity Partners, one of the fastest-growing firms in the wealth management space. Today, Cerity manages over $130 billion in client assets—but it started with a different vision: to create the first truly global, enduring professional services firm in wealth, drawing inspiration from firms like McKinsey and Deloitte, but applying it in a fiel...

This special episode of Outthinkers was recorded in front of a live audience in NYC and made possible by our friends at LHH , a global leader in HR advisory and talent solutions, trusted by executives around the world to navigate change and lead with confidence. With deep expertise in executive search, leadership development, workforce transformation, and career transition, LHH empowers organizati...

Ryan Hamilton is an associate professor of marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School and co-author of The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things . He is also co-host of the podcast The Intuitive Customer, and author of a book by the same name. He has consulted on branding with companies like Walmart, FedEx, Home Depot, Caterpillar, Co...

Gina O’Connor is a professor at Babson College, where she teaches on the topics of Corporate Entrepreneurship and Breakthrough Innovation in large mature companies. Previously, she had a long career at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.   Gina has co-authored three award-winning books on Breakthrough Innovation and published numerous papers in leading journals including Sloan Management Review, Har...

Robert E. Siegel is a lecturer in Management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he has taught various courses ranging from Systems Leadership to Financial Management for Entrepreneurs to The Industrialist’s Dilemma to Corporations, Finance and Governance in the Global Economy. He is also a Venture Partner at Piva Capital and a General Partner at XSeed Capital, and sits on multiple...

In this episode, we are joined by Brendan Rosseau and Matthew Weinzierl co-authors of Space to Grow: Unlocking the Final Economic Frontier . This episode is a journey, metaphorically speaking, into the beyond: outer space itself.  Matthew is a Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and the Senior Associate Dean and Chair of the MBA program, where his award-winning researc...

Dave Whorton is a tech investor and founder who spent 20 years of his career at the highest levels of Silicon Valley venture capital and tech startups. At the preeminent tech venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, he worked directly with John Doerr for several years. He cofounded four companies, including drugstore.com and Good Technology.   This episode is longer than our usual shorter format—and...

Cindy Anderson is the Chief Marketing Officer/Global Lead for Engagement & Eminence at the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV). Cindy has co-authored research reports, published numerous articles, and delivered presentations on thought leadership, diversity, strategy implementation, project management, and technology to global audiences.   She is a founding board member of the Global Though...

Faisal Hoque is recognized as one of the world’s leading management thinkers and technologists. He is an award-winning entrepreneur and innovator, and a #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling author with close to thirty years of cross-industry success.   Faisal is the founder of SHADOKA, NextChapter, along with a host of other companies, and serves as a transformation and innovation partner for CACI,...

JoAnn Garbin is a sustainability and technology innovator with a 25-year track record of leading teams “from nothing to something to scale,” creating numerous innovative products and profitable businesses. Her career predates the concept of climate change, and her long career in sustainability combined with her tenure at Microsoft as Director of Innovation in Microsoft’s cloud business, have given...

  Peter Compo is the author of The Emergent Approach to Strategy: Adaptive Design & Execution. Unlike many strategists from universities and consulting firms, Compo builds his groundbreaking work first as a musician and a scientist (he holds a doctorate in Chemical Engineering), and then gained experience in the “corporate trenches” at DuPont.   Hired as a research scientist, he held leadershi...

  Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez is author of Powered by Projects, Leading Organizations in the Transformation Age, the Harvard Business Review Project Management Handbook , the featured HBR article The Project Economy Has Arrived , as well as five other books. Antonio coined the concept "the Project Economy," on which his book is based. His research and global impact have been recognized and i...

Devin DeCiantis is the co-author, with Ivan Lansberg, of the 2024 book THE ENDURING ENTERPRISE: How Family Businesses Thrive in Turbulent Condition. He is a Managing Partner at Lansberg Gersick Advisors (LGA), an advisory and educational partner trusted by many of the world’s largest family enterprises.  Devin’s work and focus is on the financial, organizational, and strategic aspects of this busi...

Sandra Matz is the David W. Zalaznick Associate Professor of Business at Columbia Business School, in New York, where she also serves as the Director of the Center for Advanced Technology and Human Performance.  As a computational social scientist with a background in psychology and computer science, Sandra studies human behavior and preferences using a combination of big data analytics and tradit...

Ethan Mollick, is the Ralph J. Roberts Distinguished Faculty Scholar and Associate Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he studies the effects of artificial intelligence on work, entrepreneurship, and education. His academic research has been published in leading journals, and his work on AI is widely applied, leading him to be named one of TIME Magazine ’s Most...

Andrew Hill, is senior business writer at the Financial Times and consulting editor, Financial Times Live. He is author of Ruskinland (2019), about the enduring influence of Victorian thinker John Ruskin and Leadership in the Headlines, a collection of Andrew’s his columns. We were quite lucky to be able to corral Andrew to have a conversation with us, and I'd be remiss not to preface this po...

Dr. Marcus Collins is an award-winning marketer and cultural translator, the former chief strategy officer at Wieden+Kennedy, New York, and a marketing professor at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan.  Marcus knows how to build an enthusiastic culture around brands and products  and services. He ran digital strategy for the pop star Beyoncé, worked on iTunes + Nike sports music in...

JP Pawliw-Fry , is world-renowned keynote speaker and New York Times bestselling author, also coaches Navy Seals, professional athletes and their coaches on high performance.  As the founder of IHHP and an expert in culture, leadership, and emotional intelligence, JP has helped some of the most successful Fortune 100 companies unlock their potential by fostering courageous, high-performing culture...