Latest / The Innovation Show / Alex Osterwalder — Value Proposition Design in the Age of AI (Part 2)
Transcript
- 0:00with AI, we build stuff way too fast because you can almost
- 0:03make, perfect software with AI.
- 0:06But you know what?
- 0:07If you haven't started with a deep understanding of the customer
- 0:11jobs, pains, and gains, you're very likely to build the wrong thing.
- 0:14They'll say, "Oh, but we can build fast to learn." Well, it's
- 0:17like running up the wrong hill.
- 0:19You're gonna run up a hundred wrong hills, and you're still not gonna
- 0:22get a good understanding of the map.
- 0:25Well, what if the first thing you did is you started to really validate your
- 0:30customer understanding, and I mean going down to a quantitative understanding.
- 0:36They say waiting is a pain.
- 0:38Well, how much?
- 0:39Five minutes, ten minutes, seven and a half minutes?
- 0:42You know, you need to get quantitative, and you need to have evidence
- 0:45that supports your understanding.
- 0:47You can get that evidence with AI tools.
- 0:50You can run, you know, synthetic interviews.
- 0:53Should still probably talk to real customers, but you can also run
- 0:57really fast experiments with landing pages that were put up by AI.
- 1:01So You can compress the testing But you need to focus on the
- 1:05customer understanding first.
- 1:07Thanks as always to Kyndryl who support The Innovation Show, and sponsor book
- 1:11competitions on The Innovation Show.
- 1:13If you sign up for the Kyndryl Institute at
- 1:20and just send us the screenshot that you've signed up, you will be in with a
- 1:24chance to win a copy of Value Proposition Design by Alexander Osterwalder.
- 1:29It's a pleasure to have them as a sponsor.
- 1:31They're actually pretty cool people, good to work with.
- 1:34With a unique blend of AI-powered consulting built on unmatched service
- 1:38capability, Kyndryl helps leaders harness the power of technology for
- 1:41smarter decisions, faster innovation, and a lasting competitive edge.
- 1:45You can find Kyndryl at KYNDRYL, kyndryl.com Many of us are using
- 1:51generative AI, LLMs, or other types of AI to do tasks that
- 1:55we probably shouldn't be using.
- 1:57But sometimes we're using them to do way too much, sometimes way
- 2:00too little, or sometimes using them for the wrong task at all.
- 2:04One of those is in value proposition design, and many of us may think
- 2:09we can get rid of the entire team and replace them by AI.
- 2:13Not at all the case.
- 2:14We're joined today by a friend of the show.
- 2:16He was with us last week to talk about this idea of retiring projects,
- 2:20which projects to back, how to back them, how to see which metrics count.
- 2:24But today he's to talk to us about the idea of value
- 2:28proposition design in an age of AI.
- 2:31Friend of the show, my own friend, Alexander Osterwalder, welcome back.
- 2:35Thanks for having me back.
- 2:36Always a real pleasure to be here
- 2:38Great to have you back, man.
- 2:40Absolutely loved last week's episode.
- 2:42I'm just gonna hand over the mic to you and take us through what
- 2:45you're seeing and how your customers are changing, and what's changing
- 2:49particularly with this new technology, AI
- 2:52Yeah, I like the way you framed it, you know, like we use too
- 2:55little and too much of AI.
- 2:56We use it often for the wrong things.
- 2:59Now, the big topic that we get asked to work on a lot with our
- 3:04clients is value propositions.
- 3:06Many years after value proposition design, it was actually less popular back then.
- 3:12we get a lot of requests, and a lot of the companies that come to us,
- 3:17they actually mistake, you know, formulating your value proposition for
- 3:21a writing exercise, which it's not.
- 3:24So their AI can actually do a really good job.
- 3:27You give some inputs, and they can formulate a value proposition.
- 3:30But in order for AI to do a good job, or GenAI in particular, you need to do
- 3:36some of the homework you know, that you need to have to put into a prompt to
- 3:42get a great formulation for, you know, your value proposition, get a great
- 3:46website, great brochure, etcetera.
- 3:48I'll go a little bit into that, and I'll show you what our thinking is and how
- 3:52we started to turn that into a playbook.
- 3:55So I'll go back to the foundations of an irresistible value proposition.
- 4:01It's a bit of an evolution, but the same foundations from our book,
- 4:04but we constantly adapt what we do.
- 4:07So the first thing almost sounds trivial.
- 4:10What is the foundation and everything, you know, starts from there.
- 4:15do need to have highly relevant customer jobs, pains, and gains that you address.
- 4:23you know, with AI, we build stuff way too fast because you can almost
- 4:27make, perfect software with AI.
- 4:30But you know what?
- 4:31If you haven't started with a deep understanding of the customer
- 4:35jobs, pains, and gains, you're very likely to build the wrong thing.
- 4:38They'll say, "Oh, but we can build fast to learn." Well, it's
- 4:41like running up the wrong hill.
- 4:43You're gonna run up a hundred wrong hills, and you're still not gonna
- 4:46get a good understanding of the map.
- 4:48Well, what if the first thing you did is you started to really validate your
- 4:54customer understanding, and I mean going down to a quantitative understanding.
- 5:00They say waiting is a pain.
- 5:02Well, how much?
- 5:03Five minutes, ten minutes, seven and a half minutes?
- 5:06You know, you need to get quantitative, and you need to have evidence
- 5:09that supports your understanding.
- 5:11You can get that evidence with AI tools.
- 5:14You can run, synthetic interviews.
- 5:17Should still probably talk to real customers, but you can also run
- 5:21really fast experiments with landing pages that were put up by AI.
- 5:24So You can compress the testing But you need to focus on the
- 5:28customer understanding first.
- 5:30That sounds trivial, but it's not the case for most companies.
- 5:35I can guarantee you, all of my clients, and these are world-class brands, they
- 5:40can't give you the evidence for their quantitative understanding of customers.
- 5:45And when I say quantitative, I mean, is it five minutes of waiting that is a pain?
- 5:49Is it ten minutes?
- 5:50Is it an hour?
- 5:52They cannot give you that evidence, and that's the case everywhere.
- 5:55So that's what we need to do first.
- 5:57Seems trivial, but everything starts from there.
- 5:59Then the second one, okay, now we have a good evidence-based
- 6:03understanding of the customer.
- 6:05Now we can start to focus on the benefits.
- 6:09say, well, you know, the benefit of our solution is you're gonna
- 6:11save five minutes of waiting time.
- 6:15Well, okay, again, show me.
- 6:17What does five minutes mean quantitatively for them?
- 6:20If I don't have to wait five minutes, I'm actually gonna be able to sell more.
- 6:25You know, I'm gonna make, , ten million more revenue from my sales
- 6:28force over the next six months.
- 6:30then you show the evidence that for a majority of your
- 6:33clients, that is the case.
- 6:35So before you even build something, you start to show the evidence that
- 6:42you have an understanding which benefits do they really care about.
- 6:46So that's, number one and number two of your value proposition.
- 6:50Okay, well, now we have an idea of what could go into the value
- 6:53proposition, but there's something else.
- 6:55Well, everybody wants to focus on differentiation.
- 6:58good.
- 6:59But show me the evidence your, focus of differentiation
- 7:05actually matters to customers.
- 7:07So again, here's how I intend to differentiate, and here is the
- 7:12proof that my customers actually care about that differentiation.
- 7:16So think of how many companies look at competitors, differentiate based on
- 7:21other solutions, and they never even talk to customers if customers care.
- 7:25So they differentiate compared to competitors rather than testing
- 7:30through the eyes, the lens, the glasses of the customer.
- 7:33Okay, so that's the third one.
- 7:35And then let's get to the last one.
- 7:38I formulate a clear and simple value proposition with a
- 7:43sentence or an image or whatever.
- 7:46I also need to go and test that.
- 7:48So four components of an irresistible value proposition, and I can
- 7:54guarantee you, if you have these ingredients, you will succeed.
- 7:58Now, let me kinda just show you how this looks like in a process view.
- 8:03So we did this last week, right, where you go from opportunity launching in
- 8:08the market, and then hopefully you can have a value proposition that succeeds.
- 8:12what you really want that- We gradually go through that
- 8:19thinking of the value proposition.
- 8:21I'll call it develop and formulate.
- 8:22Includes, you know, there's two phases if you want.
- 8:25Developing is product management, product development, and formulating is
- 8:29turning that into a marketing message.
- 8:31You need to test and iterate all the time, so you go through this double loop again,
- 8:35and again, and again until you actually hit the nail and you have something
- 8:39that really resonates with customers.
- 8:41So that is, let me get out of the way again here, that
- 8:45is a step-by-step process.
- 8:47So we built this playbook for a large, um, industrial tech company, and they're gonna
- 8:54roll it out to thousand product owners.
- 8:57So the first thing they do is they map out a business model canvas
- 9:00more for the context, but then they map out the customer profile.
- 9:05But here what's important is they also need to show the evidence that
- 9:10they understand the customer, you know, from an evidence point of view.
- 9:14They talked to enough, they ran experiments.
- 9:16Then they go to the, what we call value stack.
- 9:19That's a new tool that we created, um, because we saw that the
- 9:23tools we had weren't good enough.
- 9:25But it basically, in a more analytical sense, allows you to prioritize which
- 9:29benefits matter most to customers, so we talk about the solution.
- 9:33Then you do the same for differentiation, and you show the evidence, and then
- 9:37the next one is willingness to pay.
- 9:39Now, this is what I'll call the ingredients.
- 9:44is stuff we need to do.
- 9:46It's the homework of a product owner or a marketing team.
- 9:51you have , made these ingredients, now you can formulate a brochure, you
- 9:55can fro- formulate a one-pager, you can formulate a marketing campaign
- 10:02with AI, you can now do these things really fast.
- 10:06And here's the key.
- 10:08They're gonna be extremely distinct because you have a
- 10:11distinctive customer profile.
- 10:13You have a distinctive solution based on real evidence.
- 10:17Because what companies do too often is they go right to AI to formulate
- 10:22a very lofty, high level value proposition, and it's gonna look
- 10:25the same for every single competitor because they didn't do their homework.
- 10:30you do the homework, and here you can use AI to test these things faster,
- 10:35but when you do the homework, here is where you're gonna get something
- 10:39extremely powerful, and then you iterate.
- 10:42So you'll get the best out of generative AI and iterating at lightning speed
- 10:47because you've done the footwork, the homework to actually create those prompts.
- 10:54And the problem is people don't like work, so they go do a
- 10:57shortcut, so they go right to AI.
- 11:00But the problem is, if you don't give the right data to your
- 11:05favorite AI, what's gonna come out is gonna be pretty high level.
- 11:09So kinda how we look at the world, and I can show you after how we designed
- 11:15a little, a simple playbook for that.
- 11:17But, you know, AI is great, but if you don't use it the right way, you're gonna
- 11:23get that doesn't actually reflect a customer's, you know, value proposition,
- 11:30and it's not distinctive enough, right?
- 11:32So how many of these marketing messages the same?
- 11:36Worse even, they'll use buzzwords because, you know, you have to train
- 11:40AI to actually use simple language.
- 11:42But if you use it right, it's rocket fuel because you can really
- 11:47go much, much faster, but you need to put the right things in place.
- 11:51I get super excited about this, as you can tell, because the opportunity is amazing
- 11:55I was talking to a leader from a big confectionary company recently, he was
- 12:00telling me that if you think about this, like you have a secret formula of a
- 12:05product you've created over many, many years, and now all of a sudden along
- 12:09comes, say, an enterprise AI offer, like an, an Microsoft or somebody like that.
- 12:15And there's this question of like, do I put my data in there?
- 12:20Do I put the secret formula in there?
- 12:22You know, and the whole idea of if I do that, am I I gonna
- 12:26be used as training data?
- 12:28And the other thing is, if somebody else comes along and just goes, "Here, make
- 12:31me a, a product," it's gonna draw on that content that it's already there.
- 12:36Even though may- you know, the whole idea of the terms and conditions that
- 12:39we all sign without really reading them all, I, I, I, what I have to
- 12:44tell you now, what I do is I actually put it into AI and go, what, is
- 12:47there anything to watch out here for?
- 12:49But of course, that's the AI giving me that work again.
- 12:52So it's a just a real dilemma, and I wondered if you had any thoughts
- 12:56about that or if any clients kinda pondering such dilemmas.
- 13:01Yeah.
- 13:01So two, two answers to that.
- 13:04The first one is a kind of very logical one, and, uh, there are ways today that
- 13:11you have open source AI that you can use, and you can run it on your own servers,
- 13:17and it's not gonna go anywhere, right?
- 13:19So that is possible today, and you don't necessarily need, you know, the edge
- 13:24models to, to do this kind of work.
- 13:27So if you're, if you're working on, you know, the next, protein
- 13:31for your pharmaceutical company, know, you need cutting-edge AI.
- 13:35You need, you need the most advanced models.
- 13:38But to formulate a value proposition, you can actually play it really safe
- 13:42with models that are not cutting edge.
- 13:45That's number one, right?
- 13:46So there are ways today for this kind of stuff to use AI that will
- 13:51not share with the entire world.
- 13:53Now, the second one is, does it really matter that much?
- 13:57Because, like, the key of a value proposition is a product per se
- 14:03and the product features do not create value in an absolute sense.
- 14:09It's for a specific customer segment a product will create value or not.
- 14:17every company is so unique in terms of which customers are they going
- 14:22after, what are their solutions good at, you can train models.
- 14:27You know, there's, there's no model that's gonna come up today, at
- 14:31least, that's gonna come up with the perfect value proposition for your
- 14:35competitor based on what you said.
- 14:38That's, that's a fear that I believe is irrational because it's very unique,
- 14:44and today, AI cannot, on its own, come up with a great value proposition.
- 14:49That's why I'm going back to ask, you know, like, for this customer segment,
- 14:54design the best value proposition.
- 14:56That's not gonna work.
- 14:57What you actually need to do is you could use AI to start to do market
- 15:02research, which one is the most, you know, the best growing segment.
- 15:05Then you define in that segment customers.
- 15:08You still need to go and test the jobs, pains, and gains.
- 15:11So it's gonna be so unique that even if you trained an AI based on your
- 15:16solution, it's gonna mean nothing.
- 15:18You know, it's not gonna be usable by competitors in any way.
- 15:22So we-- Not today, right?
- 15:23So today, we believe AI is gonna give you the solution.
- 15:28It will not.
- 15:29With the right ingredients, it will give you the solution.
- 15:32The human in the loop and the uniqueness of what you're pursuing is still today,
- 15:37we don't know for how long, is it a year?
- 15:39Is it two years?
- 15:41But today, and for the foreseeable future, AI will not give you the solution per se.
- 15:46You need to do that homework.
- 15:48And I can tell you, I did try, and I do have a lot of, you know,
- 15:52colleagues working in this space with AI and advanced AI agents.
- 15:54Today, it's not possible.
- 15:54So I
- 15:59I think the fear today short term is overstated.
- 16:03longer term it could be a different story
- 16:06It reminds me of the quote by Henry Ford, "If I asked AI what my customer
- 16:11wanted, it would've said a faster horse." And it would've told me
- 16:15how great I was for thinking of it
- 16:18So the, the problem is we, we overestimate and underestimate AI or Gen AI.
- 16:24So AI is pretty good at some tools, pattern recognition,
- 16:30all that kind of stuff.
- 16:31Definitely world-class on formulating value propositions if
- 16:35you give it the right ingredients.
- 16:38I'd be less worried about the copying aspect.
- 16:41I'd be more worried about are we using AI to its max, because I
- 16:45still see today marketing teams that spend time on wordsmithing.
- 16:50Well, are you serious?
- 16:52Today, your websites, your brochures should be constant iterations with AI.
- 16:58You shouldn't be writing a word.
- 17:00Like, you should be giving ingredients, meaning…
- 17:03So this is, this is actually a good segue.
- 17:05Let me show you how we do it with our playbooks, because it's actually a, a
- 17:11pretty powerful way of working, right?
- 17:12So we say, okay, we created this thing.
- 17:15It's very simple.
- 17:15It's very delimited to, you know, we, we call this thing strong value propositions
- 17:19and differentiation with Gen AI.
- 17:21How do you use your favorite AI tool, create value propositions
- 17:28as a sentence, as a landing page?
- 17:30Well, first you need a product description, you actually need, know,
- 17:35the analytical point of view, customer jobs, pains, and gains, and the value
- 17:39proposition, then you need a favorite AI.
- 17:43What you do is, here's again, it's kind of more formulated in a, a playbook sense of
- 17:48way, and I'll show you how it looks like.
- 17:49First, what you do is the homework, and this is what playbook focuses on.
- 17:55How do I describe my customer that I'm targeting on jobs, pains, and gains?
- 17:59How do I test those jobs, pains, and gains?
- 18:02Okay.
- 18:02Once I have that, I have a validated customer profile.
- 18:05That's an ingredient.
- 18:07Next ingredient, how do I come up with the benefits?
- 18:10How do I test those benefits?
- 18:12Are those really things that people want?
- 18:14Okay, now I have validated benefits.
- 18:16Now all I need to do, this is super powerful.
- 18:19I take a neutral product description, I take screenshot of my customer profile, I
- 18:25take a screenshot of my value proposition, I throw that into an AI, and I have a
- 18:32prompt, and out comes whatever, you know, description, landing page that you want.
- 18:38So it's really about the ingredients more than anything else, right?
- 18:42So I kinda show you that,
- 18:46You know I don't like to be salesy, but I gotta show this, right?
- 18:49'Cause it's pretty cool, and I, I know you'll be down with it.
- 18:54So, so I'm gonna show you this looks like.
- 18:58I showed you the playbook library.
- 18:59You get access to all these playbooks.
- 19:01Here's one called Strong Value Proposition and Differentiation with Gen AI.
- 19:05So all of the steps work you through how do I formulate a customer profile?
- 19:11How do I test a customer profile?
- 19:12Everything that I just showed you on a slide, show you how to do it, but then
- 19:17this is the cool thing with playbooks, you have workspaces where you actually do it.
- 19:22So this one says Map your customer understanding.
- 19:27So that's exactly what I'm gonna do.
- 19:29If I click on this, watching a couple of videos, it shows me how to map
- 19:35out my customer ecosystem in a visual workspace with sticky notes, how
- 19:40to pick the most important customer that I need to focus on, then how
- 19:45to map out a customer profile.
- 19:48these are all the things that we discovered teams are not good at.
- 19:52So if you're in B2B, let's say you're selling whatever, jet engines.
- 19:57So you know what?
- 19:59You actually have several customers, users, influencers,
- 20:04channel partners for whom you n-need to have a value proposition.
- 20:08once you map all of those out, then you ask which ones are gonna be the
- 20:12most important in the decision-making.
- 20:15You know what?
- 20:15Teams mostly focus on the users, but the users rarely make the decisions in B2B.
- 20:21all of their value proposition is gonna be around the user
- 20:24rather than the decision-maker.
- 20:26So what we do in these playbooks is just guide people through the right
- 20:31steps so they can do it on their own.
- 20:34now when we work into, in a B2B context, we can custom design those
- 20:39playbooks based on their needs.
- 20:41But what we try to do, because we're passionate about it, we take everything we
- 20:46learn in the best and biggest companies, and we share it in our public playbook
- 20:50library so everybody can get access.
- 20:52So what I showed you, the, you know, , formulate your value proposition with
- 20:56GenAI is accessible to everybody, and it benefits from those projects we
- 21:00do with some of the strongest brands.
- 21:02And, and for all of your listeners, know what?
- 21:05The best and biggest brands are not getting the basics right either.
- 21:10So they need to remember, we need to go back to the customer.
- 21:14We need to test and validate the customer jobs, pains, and gains or the problem.
- 21:20That's the ingredient, the marketing ingredient we then use for AI.
- 21:24So what's astonishing is that these best brands on the planet are not further
- 21:31than the small and medium-sized company.
- 21:33Now, the advantage for smaller companies is your, decision path
- 21:37is much smaller, so you can put this stuff in place right away.
- 21:41All you need is the playbook.
- 21:42So I think there's a huge opportunity with AI.
- 21:46gonna see a lot of cool new value propositions emerge.
- 21:51Some are just formulations of products without AI, and some
- 21:55are gonna be new products and services with AI embedded, right?
- 21:59So there's… It's an amazing space that's going on.
- 22:02It's like the age of innovation and entrepreneurship
- 22:05And Alex has kindly given us for the Innovation Show audience, as well.
- 22:10INNOVATIONSHOW20, if you put that into the coupon code on the Strategyzer
- 22:14website, you'll get 20% off on that site.
- 22:17And also, I'm gonna link to it where you can find out more about that content.
- 22:20Alex, one more question, 'cause I know you're doing a, a webinar with friend of
- 22:24the show, former guest, Tendayi Viki, your friend and collaborator with Strategyzer.
- 22:30Maybe you'll tell us a little bit about that as well, but just, I, I was thinking
- 22:34here about, say there's a regular listener to the show, a guy called Corey Rollins.
- 22:38Shout out to you, Corey.
- 22:40And he's building a prototype.
- 22:43He's built it, a prototype pillow for people who get, like, numbness in their
- 22:47fingers and, you know, we've all had this cold feet and ver- vertigo type symptoms,
- 22:54and I was telling him about your work.
- 22:56So say somebody like him, how, how does he, somebody who has an idea,
- 23:00somebody at home who's just kind of going, "Hmm, I have this idea,"
- 23:04how do they get started with this?
- 23:07So remember I was differentiating between product development
- 23:13value proposition formulation.
- 23:16and this is actually, you know, for everybody, but like with the big client
- 23:20I'm working with right now, we distinguish these two phases because in both phases
- 23:24you need to test and iterate, but you don't test and iterate the same thing.
- 23:27So when you already-- when you have an idea, well, guess what?
- 23:32You should go through that process of first, you know, validating customer
- 23:36needs, jobs, pains, and gains, validating the benefits, validating
- 23:40the differentiation before actually working on the details of your product.
- 23:45So the problem is people go too fast towards a prototype before having a deep
- 23:52understanding of the priorities, right?
- 23:53So that would be if your product is just an idea.
- 23:57now the big challenge is, and I'll tell you, Strategyzer is not
- 24:01good at that either, so we we're doing this for ourselves as well,
- 24:05is you have a product that works.
- 24:07You actually know that people like it, but you haven't formulated it
- 24:12in the right way that resonates.
- 24:14So what you actually need to do is you go a little bit
- 24:18further, and this is much faster.
- 24:19That's the cool part.
- 24:20Your product exists, you know it kind of creates value, but then
- 24:23you still need to have validated jobs, pains, and gains, validated
- 24:27benefits, validated differentiators that you take and you feed into AI.
- 24:33And here's the key.
- 24:34Now you would come up with three alternatives, and in the market you
- 24:39test the three alternatives, one that emphasizes this feature, one
- 24:43that emphasizes that feature, and one that emphasizes a third feature.
- 24:47Or it could be the pricing.
- 24:49then you do so-called ABC test.
- 24:52So there are different types of things you test in different
- 24:56phases from product development all the way to marketing messages.
- 25:00So if that pillow exists Now your task is to, you know, if you don't have
- 25:06the price yet, you gotta test actually the pricing, but you also wanna test
- 25:11the differentiation that you, you know, put on the website, and that
- 25:14should not be a logical conversation.
- 25:17It should be evidence-based.
- 25:19Evidence from product development and evidence from conversion rates.
- 25:24So if I have three websites and the only thing that I change is the
- 25:28differentiator of the product, and I see, you know, very strong, conversion
- 25:34rate differences, I already know this message resonates more than this one.
- 25:39So these are the kinds of things you test your messaging even, not that hard once
- 25:45you know how the playbook works like.
- 25:47But we tend to overthink and under-experiment.
- 25:51Corporations even worse.
- 25:52Like, they will think for ages and business cases.
- 25:56But even entrepreneurs, they tend to overthink and under-experiment.
- 25:59So get started with the right experiment depending on where you are in your, in
- 26:04your project, and this sounds like the project exists, right, with the pillow?
- 26:09It sure does, but I, I, it's so interesting.
- 26:11I was thinking about the parallels between what we talked about on
- 26:14retiring business ideas last week, because this is a discipline again.
- 26:19Like, people think about entrepreneurship and innovation roles as creative roles.
- 26:25They are, but there's a huge science now and a discipline, and it's actually
- 26:28the discipline that carries you through.
- 26:30The analogy I have, and I know you're big into your own fitness
- 26:34and health, is the same thing, is that you can't outsource that.
- 26:38You, you can, you can, you can be healthy, but you still have to show
- 26:42up, not eat that thing, eat that thing, go to the gym, make sacrifices,
- 26:49have only one beer, all that kind of stuff that makes a huge thing.
- 26:52And it's the exact same.
- 26:53It's, it's a discipline to get to the end, and the creativity is not enough
- 26:59and I love that.
- 26:59Let me take that and, I'll tell you.
- 27:02We did a pitch for a big company probably like two, three months
- 27:06ago, and it was just the season of Roland-Garros, and they were looking
- 27:12at training, and we were pitching the playbooks and, and, and we kinda had
- 27:16to tell them, like, "Why do you…
- 27:17we need playbooks in another platform?" And then I took the, I took that
- 27:21sports analogy and I said, "Okay.
- 27:23Well, you know what?
- 27:24Um, Roger Federer, he was pretty good.
- 27:26He won Roland-Garros, I don't remember which year.
- 27:29So think of it this way.
- 27:30If we did e-learning- To teach you how to become a Roger Federer.
- 27:35We wouldn't go very far, right?
- 27:36Because we would, we would show you videos of how to hold the racket, and
- 27:40then we would ask you, "Is Roger Federer holding the racket right?" And we'd think
- 27:44that that's gonna change the behavior.
- 27:47That's not gonna happen.
- 27:48But now think of it this way.
- 27:50So Roger Federer had a coach, a youth coach, who unfortunately passed
- 27:55away in the middle of his career.
- 27:58imagine if you had the playbook of how that coach trained Roger Federer,
- 28:04videos to show, so you do need to see that, but instead of then filling out,
- 28:09you know, like a, a multiple choice how you hold the racket, what if it
- 28:13got you to play that move right away?
- 28:15So the sports thing is the same thing.
- 28:19You cannot become really healthy, if we're talking amateur sports,
- 28:23or you can't become a world-class athlete by watching videos.
- 28:27Does it mean you're not gonna watch videos?
- 28:29Of course not.
- 28:30Roger Federer, you know, watched hours and hours of training videos.
- 28:34But it's the combination between learning, visualizing, theory, and practice.
- 28:40And today I don't think we're doing that well enough, so a lot of good
- 28:44content out there, books and, you know, tools and… But at the end of the day,
- 28:49it's how do we get to that outcome?
- 28:51And you get to the outcome by learn, do, learn, do.
- 28:54Another pract- An- another, profession that's good at that is, medicine.
- 28:58So you're not gonna become a surgeon by reading books.
- 29:01Do you need to read a lot of books an- and understand anatomy and all of that?
- 29:05You bet, but it's also practice.
- 29:08So I think in business, you know, we underestimate that this is a profession
- 29:13that requires you to learn and watch videos, also requires you to apply.
- 29:19And again, in our case, we figured out a really kind of efficient way with
- 29:23the playbook, so I'm excited about it.
- 29:24That's why I wanna get this out there, because I do want people to change,
- 29:28because the way we do things today is not fully professional when it gets to growth.
- 29:34I think we're world-class at running companies for some aspects , supply
- 29:37chains, when it comes to growth initiatives, we're kind of acting as if,
- 29:43you know, it was just a creative thing.
- 29:45And if you're creative enough, you're gonna come up with
- 29:47great value propositions.
- 29:48You nailed it when you said this is a profession, and professions you learn.
- 29:53Now because we don't have enough time, we need a very efficient, effective way to
- 29:57learn fast, so we can't, you know, do the six-year internship of a, of a doctor.
- 30:03But we can do things that, that resemble that but that are highly effective
- 30:07and another way you're teaching people is through webinars as well.
- 30:11I mentioned that one with our friend Tendayi.
- 30:13Do you wanna share a little bit about that, and then we'll land the ship today?
- 30:16What, what dawned on us at one point is that we're known for content and
- 30:22tools, and we're seen as a consulting company, but then we realized, well,
- 30:26our most powerful thing is playbooks.
- 30:27So all of our webinars are now showcasing playbooks.
- 30:32How do you actually apply this?
- 30:33And with Tendayi Tendayi has done a lot of projects where he calls this his
- 30:38party trick where a company brings him in, and then they ask him, "Assess if
- 30:43this is a good project or not." Now, he knows that you can't analytically just
- 30:49by looking at it say it's a good project or not, but there is a technique, and
- 30:53that's what we talked about together in your last… in our last show, right?
- 30:57You can the evidence.
- 31:00So what we're gonna do in the next, webinar is we're going to show you
- 31:04with a real project, how can I apply this, apply this playbook to assess the
- 31:10evidence that will show me if this is a project that should be retired or if this
- 31:15is a project that we should invest in?
- 31:17Because it's possible, right?
- 31:19So you just need to know why.
- 31:21So we're super excited about showing these techniques down to here's not the
- 31:26theory, here's actually how you apply it so you get the same outcome that we
- 31:30get, you know, when we work with clients.
- 31:32And Tendayi does this a lot with clients, assessing, you know, projects, and he
- 31:36calls it a party trick, so we're gonna reveal the party trick, if you want.
- 31:40Brilliant.
- 31:40And you can find that at Strategyzer.com/events/business-idea-evaluation,
- 31:49and I'll put that in the show links as well.
- 31:51It's always a pleasure, man.
- 31:52I look forward to the next in our Strategyzer series as well.
- 31:56Friend of the show, author of, those who are watching us, all those books behind
- 31:59me, and I should have actually taken it.
- 32:01I have Biz for Kids . Where is it?
- 32:03Of my favorite
- 32:04I told ya, Biz for Kids.
- 32:06Biz for Kids is there as well, signed.
- 32:08I have a signed, special signed copy as well from Alex.
- 32:12Alexander Osterwalder, thank you for joining us
- 32:14Thanks for having me.
- 32:15Keep up the, the great work, my friend
- 32:18With a unique blend of AI-powered consulting built on unmatched managed
- 32:22service capability, Kyndryl helps leaders harness the power of technology for
- 32:26smarter decisions, faster innovation, and a lasting competitive edge.
- 32:30You can find Kyndryl and the Kyndryl Institute at KYNDRYL.com