The Book

The marvelous Anna Catalano and I are jointly writing this.

A WORK IN PROGRESS - Paused to let GenAI LLMs burn in.

Definitely a rough draft - work in progress

 

A lot of this came out of seven sets of experience:

 

  • Engagement and talks with the National Association of Corporate Directors and its members. Anna and I are members. I was honored to win their Top 100 Award in 2023.

  • Anna and I co-founded the Kellogg Innovation Network 16 years ago, which evolved into the World Innovation Network. This network is dedicated to creating unlikely collaborations by bringing together leaders from various sectors—public, private, startups, nonprofits, the arts, academia, and defense—to explore opportunities that promote global prosperity.

  • Anna’s long and continued service on boards.

  • Big tech transformation-intensive jobs at global brands across several industries.

  • Hundreds of Board and C Suite conversations explaining the 4th Industrial Revolution, 5G, and the concurrent change waves.

  • I have delivered lectures and discussions on the same at HBS, Booth, Naval Postgraduate School, Kellogg, Booth, Cornell, Georgetown, and various boards and C-suites. I also received my foundational education from Kellogg and attended a year-long invite-only symposium on board excellence with HBS icon Prof. Jim Cash.

  • As an employee, advisor, board member, Exec in Residence, Chairman and Executive Chairman I have worked inside 46 start-ups. I also had 12 board seats (public, private, not-for-profit), exiting a high-tech/deep-tech one in Dec 2024 when it was acquired. Currently serving on the board of leading edge breakthrough tech firm , Vantiq..

 

 

The book will have three main parts:

 

Explanation/Demystification

 

Begining explains the 4th Industrial Revolution/5G and the dozen change waves coming at the same time.

 

It demystifies those.

 

Flourishing in a Sea of Change/Innovation

 

The next 5 – 10 years will have more change than the last 20 and like prior ‘industrial revolutions,’ there will be winners and losers. This will happen at the national, sector, vertical, ecosystem, and company levels.

 

Creative destruction cycles unfortunately have a destructive side. It will talk about how not to end up there.

 

It will take a brief look back through history at ties of innovation-fueled change and see what worked best.

 

Then it explains what that means to competition, brands, customers, business models, modern innovation, and tech intensity.

 

That then informs how boards have to behave differently and often be composed differently.

 

Modular Resources

  • Strategic Frameworks (10Ps, AI Transformation Models, Innovation Radar)

  • Technology Deep Dives (AI, Cybersecurity, Quantum Computing)

  • Leadership & Culture (Talent Optimization, Corporate Governance)

  • Lessons from History (Industrial Revolutions, Military Strategy, Startups)

  • Future Forecasting (AI in 3-8 Years, The Unseen Risks)

 

This is essentially a stack of pragmatic short sidebars relevant to the challenges ahead. Somewhat ironically, in times of change, some basics become even more important.

This is innovation meets pragmatism. Things like:

 

 Strategic Frameworks (10Ps, AI Transformation Models, Innovation Radar)

 ·      Toby’s 10 Ps

·      A rethink of Ideation to Product Management to Product Development

·      Accelerators versus Consultants

·      A recap on how the long chain from Strategy Change to Impact works and what are the two most common root causes for failure

·      The three leadership hats

      Accelerators versus Consultants

·      AI Transformation Model

·      Innovation Radar and the Four Buckets

·     The IT Factory Model and how to drive impact - stories from successful experience

 

Technology Deep Dives / Explainers (AI, Cybersecurity, Quantum Computing)

  

·      AI Simplified. It’s four different things. A framework to managing and excelling and why finance is technology’s most important partner on AI

·      Architectural Lego and Why That Matters

·      Key new elements of Cybersecurity

·      Running IT is 5 different things not one...how to and how to excel

·      AI Transformation Model and why partnering with the CFO is essential - stories from successful experience

·      MR/AR/VR/XR demystified and why BR is the next big thing and the right framework-

·      Demystify 5G and where that is heading

·      The three things about cyber that really

·      Modern tech is like rugby or running a commercial kitchen. It is conceptually simple but really hard to do well. How to manage that

 

Leadership & Culture (Talent Optimization, Corporate Governance)

 

·      What is Culture inside a company and how is it really managed

·      Journey Talent concept

·      Why collegial beats combative starting at the board level…probably for the body…from my year with Prof Jim Cash HBS

·      Building in continuous improvement in a GenAI world

·      GenAI and Your Vault of Tacit Knowledge

·      Stupid in Hindsight is a great teacher. A series of things that at the time made sense but in hindsight were stupid that I did throughout my career, as well as a couple of things I have observed.

·      Talent impact and diverse sources/teams

·      Demystifying the chain from strategy to mission to structure to talent to command and control.

·      GenZ and the five imperatives

·      Ecosystem competition and the anchor of partnership prowess

·      Pragmatic Anthropological approach to innovation

·      The metaphysics of business information and why you are wasting effort and time without understanding this

·      The real lessons of Silicon Valley from work for Sec Def Carter

·      Keeping a sense of perspective, purpose, humor and a thought experiment about grandchildren

 

 

Lessons from History (Industrial Revolutions, Military Strategy, Startups)

 

·      Infrastructure Poetics for enterprises

·      Lessons from Ukraine

·      What can businesses learn from how Special Operations approaches execution...I did a lecture/class  at SOCOM on how to create a culture of innovation and did a chapter in a book co-published by them and the Center for Global Security Research out at Lawrence Livermore Nat'l Lab that details that.

·      The real story behind Cinco de Mayo and what the battles (yes plural) mean for business.

·      Von Moltke and innovation - innovation, planning and winning.

·      The Hittites 1100 BC and agility.

 

Tools (Pragmatic demystifiers and easy how to’s)

 

·      Change Management demystified and the four basic models

·      FedEx and Contingency Diagraming

·      The simple fundamentals of program management, how that is often under-resourced/neglected, and why it matters

·      Networking - what two masters taught me early on and why that matters more than you think - Jim Barksdale and Andy Grove

·      Motivation, demotivation and engagement in a modern world

·      My anthropologist adoptive Dad. Why anthropology really matters now more than ever. Also maybe some input from Gillian Tett’s book Anthrovision.

·      Behavioral Econ…why some of the basics matter

·      How corporations continually screw up start-up acquisitions and how not to do that

 

 

Future Forecasting (AI in 3-8 Years, The Unseen Risks)

 

·      A year-by-year look at the next three years and why years 4 - 8 are foggy

·      The reality of the future of work

·      The accelerating horizon

·      Quantum and why you should care now and more shortly

·      Migratory Talent Models

·      Future ready talent supply chains

·      Brands and Trust – the tech evolution of trust and transparency