Thought Sparks

In this week’s Thought Sparks Podcast episode, Rita McGrath, a Columbia University Business School Professor, C-Suite strategist, business founder and best-selling author, sits down with Deborah Perry Piscione, co-author of the book “EMPLOYMENT IS DEAD: How Disruptive Technologies are Revolutionizing the Way we Work” and co-founder and Chief Future Officer of the Work3 Institute.  0:22: Welcome and Introduction to “Employment is Dead” 1:39: The Core Thesis: Why Employment as We Know It Is Ending 6:18 The Destruction of Jobs: AI, Humanoids, and Physical Work 14:18: Carlota Perez’s Theory of Economic Transitions 17:54: The Work3 Institute: Advising Organizations Through the Shift 20:32: Education: What K–12 and Universities Must Become 27:23 Alpha Schools and New Models for Learning 31:00 Economics, Purpose, and the Meaning Crisis 37:40 Humanoids, AI Relationships, and Human Identity 42:49 Optimism, Pessimism, and Where We Stand 50:11 What Leaders and Organizations Should Do Now 52:15 Where to Learn More   Want to learn more about Rita’s ideas and hear more of her conversations with business leaders and innovators?  Listen to more Thought Sparks Podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts  and Spotify. Watch Thought Sparks episodes on YouTube. Follow Rita on LinkedIn, Instagram, X and Blue Sky. Connect with Rita on TikTok. Sign up for her Thought Sparks Newsletter on Substack.  Learn more about Rita, her books and ideas at RitaMcGrath.com 

In this week’s Thought Sparks Podcast episode, Rita McGrath, a Columbia University Business School Professor, C-Suite strategist, business founder and best-selling author, welcomes Sangeet Paul Choudary– expert on platform economics and network effects, and the recipient of the 2025 Thinkers50 Strategy Award – to discuss his new book Reshuffle. 0:00 - Intro & Teaser  0:31 - Welcome & Guest Introduction (Sangeet Choudary, author of "Reshuffle")  1:49 - The Maginot Line Analogy: Why We're Solving the Wrong Problem with AI  4:07 - AI's Automation Lens vs. the Coordination Lens  5:02 - AI's Real Impact: Changing How the Economy Connects  7:15 - What Inspired the Book "Reshuffle"  9:40 - The Shipping Container Analogy: Lessons for AI  11:21 - From Port Automation to Systemic Transformation  13:04 - How AI Makes Tacit & Unstructured Knowledge Usable  15:35 - AI's Impact on Jobs & Roles: What Really Disappears  17:51 - Coordination as AI's Magical Property  18:27 - What AI Means for Strategy  19:08 - From Operational Uncertainty to Structural Uncertainty  19:51 - Industry Boundaries Are Collapsing  21:46 - The New Way to Win: Reshaping the Playing Field  26:51 - The TikTok Example: Intelligence-First vs. Social Graph  29:34 - Shein & AI-Driven Fast Fashion  33:45 - Sephora: AI as a Consumer Decision-Making Assistant  36:13 - Solution Providers vs. Tool Providers (Two Strategic Roles)  41:55 - What Will Happen to Consulting?  44:22 - New Business Models: Rentable, Recombinable & Scalable (Mr. Beast Burgers)  48:30 - Sangeet's Next Book: "Unfair Advantage"  51:01 - The Dynamics of Transition: From Petroleum Age to Digital  53:00 - Apple's Masterclass in Value Migration (iPod → iPhone)  57:37 - Closing Remarks & Farewell New episodes of the Thought Sparks Podcast are released every Tuesday at 11am Eastern.   Want to learn more about Rita’s ideas and hear more of her conversations with business leaders and innovators?  Listen to more Thought Sparks Podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts  and Spotify. Watch Thought Sparks episodes on YouTube. Follow Rita on LinkedIn, Instagram, X and Blue Sky. Connect with Rita on TikTok. Sign up for her Thought Sparks Newsletter on Substack.  Learn more about Rita, her books and ideas at RitaMcGrath.com 

In this week’s Thought Sparks Podcast episode, Rita McGrath, a Columbia University Business School Professor, C-Suite strategist, business founder and best-selling author, welcomes Christian Marcolli, a performance psychologist who works with elite athletes and executives on how to achieve and sustain high performance, and the author of “Winning Match: Leadership for Game Changers”  00:27 Introductions and Novartis’ Culture Leadership Advisory Board 2:19: From Professional Soccer Player to Psychology PhD Candidate 8:37: Working with Roger Federer 10:05: Creating Frameworks that Nurture Talent 12:55: The 4 Traits of a Potential Game Changer 14:32: The Role of Generosity in Leadership 17:03: Leadership Sparring: How Leaders Get Feedback as Organizations Flatten 23:35: The Five Practices for Performance Improvement 29:42: Examples from NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang and Airbnb’s Brian Cheskey 33:36: Case Study in Performance Improvement 36:59: How Leaders Foster the Development of Potential 38:49: The Hidden Talents That Leaders Miss 42:20: Examples from Elite Athletes: How Mindset Boosts Performance 47:33: How to Find a Leadership Sparring Partner 48:59: Why Peer-to-Peer Leadership Support is Indispensable 52:03: Takeaways to Implement Right Away    Thought Sparks are the brainchild of Rita McGrath. They are insightful actions, strategic ideas, actionable suggestions and innovative approaches that help organizations and leaders master the future with less fear and more confidence.   New episodes of the Thought Sparks Podcast are released every Tuesday at 11am Eastern.   Want to learn more about Rita’s ideas and hear more of her conversations with business leaders and innovators?  Listen to more Thought Sparks Podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts  and Spotify. Watch Thought Sparks episodes on YouTube. Follow Rita on LinkedIn, Instagram, X and Blue Sky. Connect with Rita on TikTok. Sign up for her Thought Sparks Newsletter on Substack.  Learn more about Rita, her books and ideas at RitaMcGrath.com  

In this week’s Thought Sparks Podcast episode, Rita McGrath, a Columbia University Business School Professor, C-Suite strategist, business founder and best-selling author, welcomes Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, professor of business psychology at University College London and an adjunct professor at Columbia University,  and the author of Don't Be Yourself: Why Authenticity Is Overrated (and What to Do Instead).  00:00 Introductions 01:06 Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? 02:54"Don't Be Yourself”: Why This Book, Now 05:21 Authenticity Versus Leadership, and Being the Leader the Situation Calls For 06:59 The Visibility of Authenticity  09:18 Power and Self Censorship from Jeff Pfeffer 11:04: The Four Mantras of Authenticity 11:30: Mantra 1: “Honesty” 14:18 Mantra 2: “Don’t Worry About What People Think” 15:45 Skill Building and Self Awareness, from Matt Beane 18:27 Mantra 3: “Always be True to Your Values” 21:42 The Overton Window and How Norms Shift 24:03: Herminia Ibarra’s Critique of the Authenticity Paradox 26:44 Mantra 4: “Bring Your Whole Self to Work” 27:57 Diversity and Belonging at Work 30:22 How Employee Engagement Fits Into the Authenticity Picture 32:27 How DEI Interventions Utilize Authenticity  34:36 The Return to Office: Why Senior Leadership Might Prefer In-Person Work 35:38: Chip Conley’s Learning to Love Midlife 36:37: Tech Bros, Solopreneurs, and Authenticity to an Extreme 38:27 Practical Alternatives: Your Right For Self Expression Versus Your Obligation to Others 41:22 The Self Complexity Framework and Office Politics 44:41 How to Interview: Honesty versus Employability 48:32 Gen Z: Developing Grit and Learning from Feedback 55:28 AI Paranoia and Adaptation 58:42: Gen AI as “Intellectual Fast Food”   Thought Sparks are the brainchild of Rita McGrath. They are insightful actions, strategic ideas, actionable suggestions and innovative approaches that help organizations and leaders master the future with less fear and more confidence.   New episodes of the Thought Sparks Podcast are released every other Tuesday at 11am Eastern.   Want to learn more about Rita’s ideas and hear more of her conversations with business leaders and innovators?  Listen to more Thought Sparks Podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts  and Spotify. Watch Thought Sparks episodes on YouTube. Follow Rita on LinkedIn, Instagram, X and Blue Sky. Connect with Rita on TikTok. Sign up for her Thought Sparks Newsletter on Substack.  Learn more about Rita, her books and ideas at RitaMcGrath.com 

In this week’s Thought Sparks Podcast episode, Rita McGrath, a Columbia University Business School Professor, C-Suite strategist, business founder and best-selling author, welcomes José Marcilla, President of Latin America and Canada (LACan) Region at Novartis, and author of “Unlimited Leadership”.   00:46: Why this Book, and The Crisis of Good Leadership 3:04: Jose’s Journey and Career Path 5:16: Burnout, and the Need for Leaders to Focus on What They Can Control 8:06: Humanism in Leadership: The “Hardware” and “Software” that Leaders Need 10:38: Explaining Tough Decisions to Your People 13:42: Novartis’ Transformation Strategy: The Intersection of Technological and Biomedical Revolutions 16:00: Building an Inspired, Curious, and Unbossed Culture at Novartis 18:01: Clarity and Simplicity in Corporate Strategy 19:50: The Next Best You: Are You Changing as Fast As The World Is? 22:59: Staying Grounded as a Senior Leader 25:40: Setting the Tone Around Innovation and Failure 28:16: How Leaders Can Repair Eroded Trust in 3 Ways 32:37: Amy Edmondson’s 3 Types of Failures 34:59: Leaders as Coaches: How Coaching Training Changed Jose’s Leadership 37:40: The Delayering Question: Bureaucracy Eats Culture for Breakfast  43:19: What Leaders Need to Unlearn 45:15: Advice for Gen Z: Going from a “Tetris” Mindset to a “Roblox” Mindset 50:27: The Importance of Mentorship   Thought Sparks are the brainchild of Rita McGrath. They are insightful actions, strategic ideas, actionable suggestions and innovative approaches that help organizations and leaders master the future with less fear and more confidence.   New episodes of the Thought Sparks Podcast are released every other Tuesday at 11am Eastern.   Want to learn more about Rita’s ideas and hear more of her conversations with business leaders and innovators?  Listen to more Thought Sparks Podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts  and Spotify. Watch Thought Sparks episodes on YouTube. Follow Rita on LinkedIn, Instagram, X and Blue Sky. Connect with Rita on TikTok. Sign up for her Thought Sparks Newsletter on Substack.  Learn more about Rita, her books and ideas at RitaMcGrath.com 

In this week’s Thought Sparks Podcast episode, Rita McGrath, a Columbia University Business School Professor, C-Suite strategist, business founder and best-selling author, welcomes Steven Goldbach and Geoff Tuff, authors of Hone: How Purposeful Leaders Defy Drift. They explore how leaders can align their organizations amid the “drift” that can accompany large transformations and other contexts of uncertainty.   8:52: Early Research: Beyond the “70-20-10" Innovation Portfolio 13:32: Strategy, Budgeting, Governance, and Career Advancement: Forces in Opposition 16:05: Detonate, Provoke, Hone: From Blowing Up the Playbook to Operationalizing a New One 20:46: The Difference Between Honing and Sharpening, from Chef Flannery Colton 25:41: Treat Change as the Normal Thing, Not the Weird Thing 27:36: What are Management Systems?: The Critical Fifth Box of the Choice Cascade 35:03: The Role of Visionary CEOs 38:00: A Guide to Human Behavioral Change, and Patience 42:40: Transformation and Innovation at Deloitte 48:00: Case Studies in Collaboration from Sony and the Mayo Clinic 51:49: Diseconomies of Scale, and the Risks of Being Too Big to Hone 59:00: Single-Person-Unicorns, and How Units of Value Creation Change 1:01:05: “We Don’t Have Eight Planets to Burn”: The Sustainability Question    Thought Sparks are the brainchild of Rita McGrath. They are insightful actions, strategic ideas, actionable suggestions and innovative approaches that help organizations and leaders master the future with less fear and more confidence.   New episodes of the Thought Sparks Podcast are released every other Tuesday at 11am Eastern.   Want to learn more about Rita’s ideas and hear more of her conversations with business leaders and innovators?  Listen to more Thought Sparks Podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts  and Spotify. Watch Thought Sparks episodes on YouTube. Follow Rita on LinkedIn, Instagram, X and Blue Sky. Connect with Rita on TikTok. Sign up for her Thought Sparks Newsletter on Substack.  Learn more about Rita, her books and ideas at RitaMcGrath.com 

In this week’s Thought Sparks Podcast episode, Rita McGrath, a Columbia University Business School Professor, C-Suite strategist, business founder and best-selling author, welcomes Sylvia Acevedo,  a trailblazer with experience spanning NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to executive roles at Apple, Dell, and IBM, and serving as the CEO of the Girl Scouts.   1:56: The Trailblazer’s Playbook: From a Dirt Road Town to NASA and the C-Suite 4:33: Sylvia’s Origins: A Girl Scouts Model Rocket and Lessons in Failure 8:31: Breaking Big Goals into Smaller Pieces 11:25: “Don’t Leave a Cookie Sale Until You Hear No 3 Times”: Lessons in Tenacity from the Girl Scouts 14:01: “Girls Like You Don’t Go to College”: Becoming One of the First Hispanics to Earn a Graduate Engineering Degree from Stanford 18:06: Innovating Above and Beyond at IBM 21:23: A Mental Checklist to Reach the C-Suite 30:50: Building Back Better after Failure at Autodesk 33:58: “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There”: The Link Between Personal and Professional Growth 36:58: Family Tragedy, and Sylvia’s Transition from Technology to Education 39:05: The Power of Influence in Changing Opinion 42:09: Leading the Girl Scouts: Empowering Girls in Civics, Technology, and Entrepreneurship 46:11: Historically Women’s Colleges and the Girl Scouts: The Role of Single-Gender Spaces 48:49: Leadership in Chip Manufacturing 53:07: The Story of Sylvia’s Name, and Bilingual Systems Thinking 54:46: The Power of Taking Even Small Actions       Thought Sparks are the brainchild of Rita McGrath. They are insightful actions, strategic ideas, actionable suggestions and innovative approaches that help organizations and leaders master the future with less fear and more confidence.   New episodes of the Thought Sparks Podcast are released every other Tuesday at 11am Eastern.   Want to learn more about Rita’s ideas and hear more of her conversations with business leaders and innovators?  Listen to more Thought Sparks Podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts  and Spotify. Watch Thought Sparks episodes on YouTube. Follow Rita on LinkedIn, Instagram, X and Blue Sky. Connect with Rita on TikTok. Sign up for her Thought Sparks Newsletter on Substack.  Learn more about Rita, her books and ideas at RitaMcGrath.com 

In this week’s Thought Sparks Podcast episode, Rita McGrath, a Columbia University Business School Professor, C-Suite strategist, business founder and best-selling author, sits down with Don Tapscott, CEO of the Tapscott Group, Chairman and co-Founder of the Blockchain Research Institute, and author of “You to the Power of Two”.   00:00: Introductions and Don’s Expertise in Blockchains and Identic AI 3:04: Predictions about the Web, Revisited 20 Years On 5:20: Blockchain and The Transition from the Internet of Information to the Internet of Value 7:27: A Personalized Future with Identic AI 11:18: The 3 Phases of Digital Identities 13:10: Digital Feudalism: How Digital Conglomerates Own Our Digital Identities 18:14: “What’s the Ghost in the Machine?”: When AI Gets Embedded in Daily Life 20:06: The Jobs Question: How AI Will Affect the Nature of Employment 26:00: From Firms to Individual Contractors: When Units of Value Creation Become Smaller 31:12: The Need for a New Social Contract in the Age of AI 37:29: Rebuilding the AI Stack Around a Decentralized Physical Infrastructure 42:155: Movement Building for Self-Sovereignty over a Digital Future 

In this week’s Thought Sparks Podcast episode, Rita McGrath, a Columbia University Business School Professor, C-Suite strategist, business founder and best-selling author, speaks with Peter Capelli of Wharton and HR Strategist Ranya Nehmeh. Their book, In Praise of the Office, is a research-based assessment of the benefits and drawback of both in-person and remote work. 1:10: WFH, RTO, WFM: Acronym Soup Around Where We Should Work 3:01: Working From Home in the Early Days in the COVID-19 Pandemic 5:52: What Has Not Been Working Well, From Employer Perspectives 7:29: Generational Differences: Why Junior and Senior People Have Different Experiences with Remote Work 9:31: The Allen Curve: Poor Information Flows  and Shrinking Networks 12:38: Cubicles, Long Tables, and Hot Desking: How the Physical Office Has Evolved 15:37: Why CFOs Loved Remote Work 19:50: Individual Contributors Can Thrive in Remote Work Settings 22:57: Where New Hires Get Lost in Remote Work Settings 24:10: The Intentionality of a Hybrid Setup 26:14: Why Anchor Days Fall Short 28:15: Collaboration and Learning: When KPIs Don’t Measure What Makes Work Happen 32:03: Cohorts, Friendships, and The Social Elements of Work 34:30: Identifying When Remote Work Has Become a Problem 38:30: What Leadership Misses 43:00: Blowback to the Book: How Capelli and Nehmeh Struck a Chord 46:13: Understanding Where People Land on the RTO Debate 49:40: Case Studies: Netflix and Toss 57:07: Gen Z’s Return to the Office   Thought Sparks are the brainchild of Rita McGrath. They are insightful actions, strategic ideas, actionable suggestions and innovative approaches that help organizations and leaders master the future with less fear and more confidence.   New episodes of the Thought Sparks Podcast are released every other Tuesday at 11am Eastern.   Want to learn more about Rita’s ideas and hear more of her conversations with business leaders and innovators?  Listen to more Thought Sparks Podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts  and Spotify. Watch Thought Sparks episodes on YouTube Follow Rita on LinkedIn, Instagram, X and Blue Sky. Connect with Rita on TikTok Sign up for her Thought Sparks Newsletter on Substack.  Learn more about Rita, her books and ideas at RitaMcGrath.com  

Rob Siegel, a Stanford lecturer and venture investor, teams up with Rita McGrath to delve into the intricacies of systems leadership. They explore how strategic tensions can be illustrated through Janis Joplin's lyrics and Mercedes cars. Discussion shifts to balancing short-term gains with long-term investments, alongside the importance of humane leadership. Rob emphasizes the evolving landscape from traditional corporations to interconnected ecosystems, while also addressing the role of AI in education and the significance of continuous workforce development. A must-listen for future-focused leaders!