Evolution in liminal times

A chat with the CEO of Boundaryless.

Hi friends,

I recently had a nice chat with Simone Cicero, who I met many years ago at a conference called Frontiers of Interaction. Simone’s work is deeply inspired by the work of our mutual friend Alex Osterwalder, who designed the Business Model Canvas and has been an advocate of the design canvas as a tool for better business thinking.

1. Topics we cover in this video:
   Organizations struggle to see signals outside their existing theory, categories and mental models: ones that make them efficient but also make them blind during liminal times.

2. Customers are constantly evolving, which means they often see shifts in value long before organizations do. Paying attention to customers is one of the most reliable ways to notice what’s changing outside your existing theory.

3. Innovation requires the ability to visualize and hold ambiguity, to let go of the familiar to notice what doesn’t fit the current map.

4. Architectural innovation means breaking the system into pieces and reassembling it from first principles, not just optimizing components.

5. Most experiments will fail, but it’s important to do them anyway, because one successful experiment (like AWS for Amazon) can redefine the entire business.

6. Paying attention to anomalies and accidents can unlock entirely new markets.

7. You can’t think your way into a new worldview, but you act your way into one through play, prototyping, and exploration.

8. Looseness, redundancy, and play at the edges enable organizations to notice weak signals and adapt faster than tightly optimized systems.

Simone is the co-founder and CEO of Boundaryless, a business and platform design consultancy.

Hope you’re having a great week,