When you look at your five-year strategic plan, how much of it is dedicated to defending your current market share versus actively making it obsolete?
Agility requires more than just reacting quickly to market shifts; it demands the foresight and structure to initiate those shifts yourself.
This episode is brought to by CRMC. Drive your customers to new horizons at the premier retail event of the year for Retail and Brand marketers. Learn more about CRMC 2026, June 1-3 in Frisco Texas at http://www.thecrmc.com
Today, we’re going to talk about the accelerating pace of change being driven by forces like artificial intelligence and digitization. These changes are creating a clear divide in the market, sorting brands into two distinct camps: the “Disruptors” and the “Disrupted.” We’ll explore the patterns that separate these two groups and discuss practical frameworks for how established organizations can learn to shape the future, rather than be shaped by it.
To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome, Kaihan Krippendorff, Founder at Outthinker, and keynote speaker at CRMC, taking place June 1-3 in Frisco Texas.
About Kaihan Krippendorff
Kaihan Krippendorff is the Founder of Outthinker, a global think-tank of chief strategy, growth, transformation, and innovation officers shaping the future of business. He has been recognized by Thinkers50 and Global Gurus as one of the world’s top 20 business thinkers. A sought-after keynote speaker and strategic advisor, Kaihan works with CXOs from the world’s most admired companies, helping them to drive transformation, reduce risk, and chart their path to long-term growth and success.
Kaihan Krippendorff on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaihankrippendorff/
Resources
Outthinker: https://kaihan.net/
This episode is brought to by CRMC. Drive your customers to new horizons at the premier retail event of the year for Retail and Brand marketers. Learn more at CRMC 2026, June 1-3. https://www.thecrmc.com
Drive your customers to new horizons at the premier retail event of the year for Retail and Brand marketers. Learn more at CRMC 2026, June 1-3. https://aglbrnd.co/r/d15ec37a537c0d74
We’re proud to be a media partner for #MAICON26 – Oct. 13-15! Learn how AI can power your marketing and business and help you grow smarter. Use code AGILE150 to save! https://aglbrnd.co/r/7fe458ced0f04658
Reach your customers with Reddit. Spend $500 in ad spend, get $500 back in ad credit! Learn more: https://advertalize.com/r/491818c79fb1873f
Enjoyed the show? Tell us more at and give us a rating so others can find the show at: https://aglbrnd.co/r/faaed112fc9887f3
Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstrom
Don’t miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/35ded3ccfb6716ba
Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com
The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company
Transcript
[00:00] Greg Kihlstrom
Hi, I’m Greg Kilhstrom, host of The Agile Brand, and here’s a question for you. When you look at your five-year strategic plan, how much of it is dedicated to defending your current market share versus actively making it obsolete? Agility requires more than just reacting quickly to market shifts. It demands the foresight and structure to initiate those shifts yourself.
[00:20] Greg Kihlstrom
Today we’re going to talk about the accelerating pace of change being driven by forces like artificial intelligence and digitization. These changes are creating a clear divide in the market, sorting brands into two distinct camps, the disruptors and the disrupted. We’re going to explore the patterns that separate these two groups and discuss practical frameworks for how established organizations can learn to shape the future rather than be shaped by it.
[01:33] Greg Kihlstrom
To me, discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Kaihan Krippendorff, founder at Outthinker, and keynote speaker at CRMC, taking place June 1-3 in Frisco, Texas. Kaihan, welcome to the show.
[01:45] Kaihan Krippendorff
Greg, thanks for having me. Great to be here.
[01:47] Greg Kihlstrom
Yeah, looking forward to talking about this with you and and definitely looking forward to to CRMC and uh
[01:51] Kaihan Krippendorff
I know, I’m very excited about the conference. It’s going to be amazing.
[01:54] Greg Kihlstrom
Yeah, yeah. Uh, before we dive in though, why don’t you give a little background on yourself and your role at Outthinker.
[02:00] Kaihan Krippendorff
Yeah, um, so I started my career as a consultant at McKinsey and I started writing books, uh, 2004. I’ve written six books. I publish in Harvard Business Review. We started Outthinker in its current form about five years ago, and think of it as kind of like a peer network ecosystem of chief strategy officers, um, that get together, like a think tank and talk about the trends and issues and support each other.
[02:23] Greg Kihlstrom
Nice. Nice. Love it. So, yeah, let’s uh, let’s dive in here and certainly there’s going to be a lot more to hear at CRMC when you do a keynote there, but, you know, give, give people a little, uh, a little taste of of what you’re going to talk about, uh, maybe as well. And and I want to start with this concept that I tee’d up in the intro, which is this line between disruptors and the disrupted, which, you know, is certainly distinct, yet for a large enterprise, sometimes this isn’t a simple switch, right? So, you know, what, what’s the most significant mindset shift that a leadership team at a large organization needs to make to even begin that journey from being a defender to being an innovator?
[03:07] Kaihan Krippendorff
Yeah. No, I’m glad that you called it a mindset shift because I think it really is a mindset shift. We look at, um, when games change, like when music went from like Sony Music to Apple, um, often the incumbent gets fall, you know, falls behind, but the incumbent doesn’t have to fall behind. Garmin, for example, went from, uh, GPSs in cars to wearables, and, you know, it’s killing it in wearables. And it really comes down to the mindset. We if you understand the patterns, the core job that, you know, people want your product or service for doesn’t change, but the way that you do it, now, like music, it no longer becomes about high quality recordings, product, it becomes about placement or distribution. And when it becomes, the game becomes distribution, now that requires a different capability. It’s about technology and compression, not about curating and recording, right? But underneath that is that mindset. And so that’s what we’re going to kind of cover is, um, the mindset shifts. Um, there are a few, but you know, one of them we’ll talk a lot about is this idea of proximity, which is we’re moving into a world in which the way you win is not about predicting demand, but actually creating products and solutions at the moment of demand in space and time.
[04:19] Greg Kihlstrom
Yeah, yeah. Well, and and just to to go back to that Sony Apple example, I mean, to your point, Sony had the superior, you know, audio quality, you know, people that are less familiar can Google DATs and and all that kind of stuff, but, um, but yeah, to your point.
[04:35] Kaihan Krippendorff
They were the dominant MP3 player, right?
[04:37] Kaihan Krippendorff
Right. They they had the Sony Walkman. They they they had, yeah.
[04:40] Greg Kihlstrom
Right. Right. And yet, you know, Apple comes along at the right time. And and and and I think it’s to me, it sounds like not only a mindset shift at a company like Apple, but also shifting the mindset of the consumer as well, right?
[04:53] Kaihan Krippendorff
Yeah. I think it is. It’s, you know, it goes back and forth, right? Your consumer mindset shifts, you start offering that that what they want, and then they realize, oh my God, this is actually possible, and it changes, you know, what what they want. I think another good example of that would be the Netflix, um, uh, Blockbuster example, which I think a lot of people kind of get wrong that Blockbuster just didn’t see the mindset shifting.
[05:15] Kaihan Krippendorff
They did see the mindset shifting. They copied Blockbuster. I’m Netflix. They created a separate company, blockbuster.com, uh, Blockbuster online, a separate building, a separate leadership team, separate culture, and just said, go, take all this money and just go do Netflix. And when the websites were released, the they were shocked that the Netflix website was not a website. It was an interactive experience where people would see what they, you know, see recommendations based on their. And so kind of that mindset is they were still building a storefront, but a storefront in the cloud, or a storefront online. Um, they weren’t thinking of it as music uh, entertainment as a service. So that little subtle shift of like, what business are we in? Entertainment as a service or a storefront changes a thousands of decisions, and that informs what customers expect.
[06:07] Greg Kihlstrom
Yeah. Yeah. And and I think at least some of this points to that, uh, innovator’s dilemma, right? Um, you know, classic challenge for for even, you know, very successful companies, from a strategic standpoint, you know, how do you talk and talk with and and help leaders reframe the perceived risk of, even in the Blockbuster example, it’s like there was this paradigm of, okay, a website for us needs to do X, Y, and Z versus the Netflix Netflix example. So, you know, there’s risk of self-disruption. You know, how do you balance that versus the must the the greater and often quieter risk of inaction?
[06:47] Kaihan Krippendorff
Yeah, I think that’s a great point because I think it is often the quieter risk of inaction. Um, I think rarely is it like someone says, we have this business case and we have this business case and we’re going to debate it and we’re going to choose our old business case to protect our core. It is more subtle than that. It is the mindset, it’s the belief. I think it really comes down to like five things. Um, one is, and and and and I’m not sure if I’ll do this uh, exactly like this in the keynote, but it spells I D E A S. Imagining a different future. Okay, the future’s going to be, you know, digital distribution instead of, you know, store, right? Dissect is the business model changes, like it becomes no longer about product, it becomes about um, placement, distribution. Then expand is about the mindset is the underlying metaphors that we use to think about, what could we do differently? Those change, which reveal options. Then analyze is about choosing the options. The the options that we choose before we would throw them out because they looked crazy. But now reality has changed. You know, AI enables us to do things that we couldn’t do before. And now an idea that was a crazy idea, now, hey, what? You know, it is now feasible. And then sell is about uh, building enrollment and buy-in with your ecosystem. Your ecosystem partners change. And increasingly, companies that are winning are are working through ecosystem partners.
[08:10] Greg Kihlstrom
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So let’s talk a little bit about, you know, activating this and and and so you’ve developed the the Outthinker process for to help generate uh, powerful ideas. Can you maybe walk us through at a at a high level, you know, what what does this look like and and how, you know, what are some of the tactical steps a a team could could use this for?
[08:31] Kaihan Krippendorff
Yeah, I’ll kind of like dig into that, you know, I laid out the IDEAs. I call that the Outthinker. I believe all models are wrong and some are useful. I don’t think that this is like the magic, but it works and I’ve done it like 500 times for all kinds of companies from, you know, from QVC to Walmart to all kinds of companies. It just works, right? But if we take IDEAs, we look at the middle one, E, it is expanding your option set. And the options that we see are really, if we look at like how, and you think of you, you know, this is how consumers think, but it’s also how B2B marketers and leaders think. It is an underlying metaphor or a story that we’re telling ourselves that tell us what is the next step in the story? What options are available to us? And there are certain new narratives that are coming to to bear. One of them, for example, is, I call it coordinating the uncoordinated. There’s stuff that we used to have to control that now we can increasingly coordinate. And that’s why you see platform business models. You know, why is Urban Outfitters their stock price has been killing it for the last five years? Because they’ve proven that they can create a rental business for clothing in in newly, right? They can do Rent the Runway and they can do it actually profitably. They’re generating like a hundred million per quarter profit profitable revenue from that. Um, and and that those are I give you tons of examples, but it the whole concept is it used to be the mindset was to create compliance and predictable outcomes, we need to control things through a hierarchy. And now increasingly, we can coordinate things through a platform, for example.
[10:05] Greg Kihlstrom
Well, and within organizations, I I think there’s a couple, couple different ways that innovation at least tries to happen, right? So you mentioned, you know, I think the Blockbuster example and there’s there’s plenty of others where they set up this separate team of like, go, be innovative and and things like that. But, you know, the the other model would be to try to innovate within. But there’s, there’s a lot of barriers to to doing that and and, you know, when you have siloed teams and competing priorities or even just uh, well, yeah, competing priorities, um, some of that stuff can get in the way. You know, what what advice do you have for for leaders to get around some of that and and because scaling innovation requires, you know, kind of reaching across the aisle, right?
[10:52] Kaihan Krippendorff
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I’ve spent five years just studying that and I’ll give you really briefly seven barriers. But first I want to say like I published something on HBR like for four months ago. And what I showed is that companies are just terrible at what you’re what you’re talking about. There’s someone in the company who recognizes a customer need, right? It’s probably that that that customer experience marketing person says there is a need. Then there’s someone in operations or product, and they actually have a solution to that need. But they can’t communicate with each other. What I asked, I asked, uh, Amazon, I asked, um, Microsoft, you know, we interviewed a whole bunch, like 35 different innovation officers. And we said, if you find a customer need and you broadly let it be known inside the company that, hey, customers want this thing. How often do you find that a solution already exists? Average 71.4% of the time. Oh, wow. It already exists. So we do all this R&D creation stuff. Why? Not because we don’t have the solution, but we can’t talk, you know.
[11:50] Kaihan Krippendorff
So, um, seven quick reasons. One is, your people have given up. That’s intent. Need. They don’t understand what the customer needs or what the company needs. Um, options. They don’t generate enough ideas, they only create a few ideas. Value blockers. The business model around those ideas is inconsistent with the existing business model. Um, act. We ask them to give a approve a business plan in order to to do it, when we they need to take action, do an experiment in order to prove the business plan. Team, to your silo question, they can’t reach across the aisles and assemble a cross-functional team. And then environment, it’s about leadership and culture. So all seven of those things are barriers that successful internal innovators figure out how to overcome.
[13:34] Greg Kihlstrom
Let’s talk a little bit about measuring success of this. And, you know, so so big ideas, first of all, they’re not going to be implemented and launched overnight. So, you know, some of these things are are long-term when, you know, so many, um, execs and and leaders are being asked for short-term results from shareholders, boards, stakeholders, and so forth. So, how do you, how do you show ROI on something that’s not set to show ROI for, you know, months or or whatever? You know, how I guess how do you show progress that’s meaningful?
[14:09] Kaihan Krippendorff
Yeah. It’s it’s very complicated. This is a book that I’ve been working on for the last three years with this gentleman, Pete Fader, he’s a professor at Wharton, kind of like the the leading expert in customer lifetime value. And we’re looking at the barriers of adopting CLV, but I think that is the the as an example. There was a one major fast fashion company because it’s not a positive case, they don’t want us to tell the name, but they want to adopt CLV. They want to start measuring at the store level, um, not revenue per store, but revenue per customer or repeat purchases or frequency of visits, right? And so they tell the store people, yes, that’s what we want to measure. But now that ladders up to the region, and now the region is still being judged off of overall quarterly sales of the region. And so the region manager is now like, ah, my bonus and my is not. So, you know, I love the idea of the CLV thing, but I’m going to reward, you know, and then it just collapses on itself. So I think we need to kind of ladder up and you actually have to get investors. This is why Amazon, you know, I think what they did was so brilliant early on were tracking investors and reporting on metrics that were long-term metrics. So you start seeing, especially in software SaaS sales, you start seeing like, uh, Spotify, for example, training investors to look for metrics that are more longer-term metrics. And so if you take customer lifetime value, I’m I’m kind of like a customer lifetime value now, after doing this work, kind of a, you know, I’ve I’ve I’ve I’ve drunk the Kool-Aid. Right. I think it’s much deeper than many people think it is. But that is a way to trick the market and trick the the the enterprise to look for long-term value.
[15:51] Greg Kihlstrom
Yeah. Well, and I think the other thing there is looking looking at it long-term, you know, the the obvious thing that may not be so obvious to to many is, you know, when you do experiments, when you try things, 100% of your experiments are not going to be quote unquote traditionally successful. Right. I I I deem learning as success, but not everybody thinks that way. And so I think that also puts a lot of people off from not only the short-term, you know, being held to results for short-term gains, but also what if it doesn’t work, then, you know, what happens to my bonus or my future at the company, you know? How do you, how do you coach leaders to get their teams to be okay with, you know, with with less than success for every single experiment?
[16:38] Kaihan Krippendorff
I I think that there’s an it’s not easy, but the easiest way out is not to try to measure learning. I think it’d be great to learn to learning, but people don’t talk about measuring learning. It’s like, uh, you know. Yeah. Jeff Bezos says if he said, if you have a one in 10 chance of a hundred times payoff, you got to take that bet every time. But you got to be ready to lose nine times out of 10. Right? And what he’s speaking to, I think, is don’t consider those as 10 different bets. Consider it as one bet. And just like you and when you invest in the stock market, you diversify, and you measure the the the return on the portfolio, not on the individual investments. I think that’s what we have to start doing is wrapping a collection of bets around as one thing. Maybe there’s one team around it instead of individual teams. You know what I mean?
[17:31] Greg Kihlstrom
Yeah, yeah. Well, and I mean, in that in that scenario, totally agree. The the end goals don’t change overnight. You know, you’re, you know, you’re always going to want either, you know, or probably all of the above, but, you know, greater customer lifetime value or to sell more widgets or greater market share, whatever those things are, like those don’t change, you know, day-to-day. How you get there, though, I mean, that’s, you know, part of, part of what I talk about a ton on the show is just the agility to, you know, what happened, what got us here is not going to get us there and and all those kinds of all kinds of things. So, so yeah, I I mean, I love that concept of of the portfolio play, right? That’s kind of what you’re talking about.
[18:10] Kaihan Krippendorff
Yeah. Right. Exactly. And that’s a way to kind of like a sting with metrics. That’s a way to kind of, um, so it’s a kind of metrics and organization. Um, but I do see like very successful, um, companies that are kind of like mostly, I’m thinking the ones that I’ve studied kind of more in the appliance space, like selling washing machines and stuff like that. Um, exploring also a new kind of organizational model, where let’s say marketing, there isn’t just one marketing department. There are 10 marketing departments. And the branding people or the product people, they can decide which of those marketing departments they should work with. And if I don’t think that Kaihan is doing a good job, I want to switch to Greg. I just, at the end of the year, I’ll just say, Greg, I’m going to sign a contract with you instead of Kaihan. And now what you’ve done is you’ve basically re reallocated budget, but not through a centralized budgeting function, but through an internal marketplace. Yeah. Do you see that? And so now what happens is marketing and IT and legal and finance, they become entrepreneurs with their own P&L, and they have to try to sell their goods internally. And that gives them the upside and it kind of aligns them also with customer success.
[19:27] Greg Kihlstrom
Yeah. I I like that. And I it also kind of, not not that there’s there’s always going to be a need for agencies to some degree, but I I think outsourcing too much strategy and knowledge and and all of that has challenges as well. Um, some of my agency friends may disagree, but, um, but it is it is what it is. And so that, in other words, it keeps some of that that core knowledge in house and yet makes it competitive.
[19:53] Kaihan Krippendorff
Yeah. It’s true. Yeah. Exactly. Make them compete with, um, you you could still have a thing where we prefer if you work with our internal agencies. But it’s also fun, right? Then you can get more leadership roles for more people who can basically run their own internal agency. Right. Right. You know. And you keep, as you say, you keep that knowledge in house.
[20:09] Greg Kihlstrom
Yeah. Love that. So, um, you know, as as we’re wrapping up here, a few things here, you know, I want to get your thoughts. Certainly, you talk with a lot of of large organizations about their their challenges. I know there’s tons of talk about AI and um, you know, Gen AI, A, you know, probably by the time this episode airs, it’ll be something else as well. But either in addition to that or or maybe a focus of of AI, you know, what what’s an underlying shift that you’re seeing that maybe enterprise leaders are are not paying enough attention to?
[20:43] Kaihan Krippendorff
Yeah, I think that AI like is the bright star in a constellation of other trends when we talk to our strategy officers, kind of like 12 trends that are kind of top of their line here. I’m not going to go over all of them, but you got AI. Now, AI is getting information from IoT connected devices and smart spaces, creating a proliferation of data. Then API advances are allowing us to share that data both internally and with our ecosystem partners, which is then being able to feed it to AI. AI this year’s going to start getting arms and hands and it’s going to start moving physical spaces. More of what we sell is digitally delivered versus physically delivered. And that part of it we can customize. And then we’ve got the war in Iran, and we’ve got the global uncertainty, and then we got shifting customer, uh, expectations of more personalization. And what I think that all leads to is, a, we can sense demand more real time. I know that you’ve talked a lot about like having real time data um, of customers. Now, we can then personalize, we can change the interface of your car. We can 3D print the uh, piece that’s going to go on the whatever, right? And then we’ve got the cost of distance increasing. Oh, I don’t want to, you know, I did something for a bunch of, uh, clothing retailers and it’s like, you know, nearshoring, onshoring, the risk of these long supply chains is increasing. And then at the center of that, you got customers who expect to get exactly what they want, when they want it, as they want it, right? And so all of that is like, those are like kind of the four big trends, I would say.
[22:15] Greg Kihlstrom
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Love it. Well, you know, I’m definitely looking forward to to seeing your talk at at CRMC as well. Um, what are you most looking forward to about that event?
[22:24] Kaihan Krippendorff
I mean, I’m just excited to be able to meet with the people at the frontline who are actually like fighting the fight, who are actually in front of the customer, um, because I think that is that that capa that slice that’s going to determine who’s a disruptor and who’s the disrupted.
[22:38] Greg Kihlstrom
Yeah, love it. Well, um, Kaihan, thanks again for for joining. Last question for you before we wrap up, what do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
[22:49] Kaihan Krippendorff
Well, I mean, I do four podcasts a month, and so that forces me to like read, read, read and study. And so and then we do 200 interviews with our members, and we do round table. So like I get to I’m always learning. Yeah. ABL. Always be learning.
