Philippe MEDA - Innovation Copilots

Innovation Copilots

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Philippe MEDA

Philippe has worked with hundreds of startups since 2007, consulted for dozens of multinationals on rupture innovation and corporate incubation. He also commits classes for MBAs in Paris and Shanghai.

🥱 Is it still worth working with startups?

🥱 Is it still worth working with startups?

For the last five years, I've been trying to decide if I would entirely stop working with startups, keep a regular but minimal activity, or keep on trucking and running (or participating) in various programs totaling about 120 startups a year. Spoiler alert, the answer is a little bit of

🌷 Speaking at Tech Summit Europe

🌷 Speaking at Tech Summit Europe

This is a quick update to signal that I'll speak at Tech Summit Europe, Amsterdam, on March 28. The event is held at the Postillion hotel and business center in the city's south business and financial district (about 20 min away from the central station with the tramway, a bit

🤖 The cold war on AI

🤖 The cold war on AI

As often discussed, disruptions are vastly counterintuitive as we see them as sudden and unexpected, while they are always slow to bubble up. Regarding artificial intelligence, we can believe or not that Microsoft and ChatGPT are now racing ahead, but we might want to go back to the big picture.

👋 Moving from product to minimum viable business

/ Tools and Frameworks

👋 Moving from product to minimum viable business

In October 2012, I was already writing about the Lean Startup and the whole MVP fallacy. As I still get many questions about it, it's probably worth translating the article from French (with some cleaning up) and sharing it again.

🙀 How to cook a cat and the cost of running ChatGPT

🙀 How to cook a cat and the cost of running ChatGPT

Getting my eyes away from the turmoils ChatGPT is creating in the innovation ecosystem is difficult. A week rarely goes by without one of our customers asking an interesting question about this AI model. This week I had quite an interesting discussion with a former MBA student on how ChatGPT

⏮️ [ Looking back at ] ChatGPT

⏮️ [ Looking back at ] ChatGPT

💡I just made a quick repository of all my articles related to ChatGPT. This is for myself and future reference, but you might find it useful too. I've also added articles about digital strategy and why such generalized deep learning AI is a game-changer for the business models of tech

😱 The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat syndrome

😱 The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat syndrome

In January 1896, the Lumières brothers had the first public viewing of a ground-breaking piece of technology. "L'Arrivée du train en gare de la Ciotat" (The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat) was a single non-moving fifty seconds shot of the mundane entrance of a train in a small

🇨🇳 ChatGPT is fine, but China's long-term AI race is not going away

🇨🇳 ChatGPT is fine, but China's long-term AI race is not going away

While ChatGPT has been unleashed on the world, I started to read about European politicians and intellectuals demanding our version and asking why we couldn't invent it. This amounts to discovering a jungle and asking that we plant trees immediately to catch up ('sigh'). And while we are focused on

🤖 A Photoshop for the mind...

🤖 A Photoshop for the mind...

Tim Rayner from Phase One Insight poked me recently to discuss an article on AI published at the beginning of the year. The article "The Third Magic" discussed many thorny concepts about AI and how us humans deal with knowledge, cognition, and power. Among (many) other things, the author identifies

💥 Peacetime vs. Wartime innovation?

/ Culture and Leadership

💥 Peacetime vs. Wartime innovation?

If you think The Godfather II would be the worst possible source to find the proper inspiration for strategy and innovation, I'd be with you. That being said, the movie has an interesting line of dialogue between Michael Corleone and Tom Hagen, his half-brother of sorts and family attorney. When

🐯 Why AI is the new apex predator business model

/ Business models and Strategy

🐯 Why AI is the new apex predator business model

With the seemingly sudden rise of artificial intelligence as the new thing that no one saw coming ('sigh'), there are vast amounts of media reports, business theories, and plain drama that use words like "revolution," "disruption," "breakthrough," "obsolescence" or even "apocalypse." But, conveniently, very few parties take the time to

🎱 The second-order consequences of the pandemic

🎱 The second-order consequences of the pandemic

Now that we might start to believe that the Covid-19 pandemic is mostly behind us, we certainly want to think that everything is back to normal; whatever normal was three years ago. But it's not, and we aren't. What generally eludes us is the second-order consequences of any transformational event.

🤖 Using an AI mirror to check your brand

Among the gazillions of new applications that ChatGPT is currently offering, one that I've found quite amusing (and efficient) is checking how good your marketing is. How to do that? Simply by asking the AI to explain back to you your tagline, missions statement, or the name of your company:

📺 What is operational excellence

/ Culture and Leadership

📺 What is operational excellence

We always actively talk about how culture eats strategy for breakfast and how understanding the underlying way an organization processes decisions is critical when dealing with critical market changes. This notion of 'culture' and its 'importance' is never met with resistance. It is probably because it wouldn't seem right to

🔨 Design thinking is a tool, not a process

🔨 Design thinking is a tool, not a process

I have already expressed my doubts a few times about innovation methodologies that are both all-encompassing and self-contained. The fabulous five-step methodologies that get you from A to E flawlessly and can solve all your seemingly inscrutable problems are, at best, overly optimistic but mostly cheap grifts. If you missed

💵 What Tesla's new pricing strategy signals

/ Business models and Strategy

💵 What Tesla's new pricing strategy signals

Tesla fans might not like it, but from a pure design and "car" perspective, Tesla is the care from the future... as it was imagined twenty years ago (read: they lost their edge and are very much dated regarding what is offered by competitors). What we still overlook, though, is

🤘 We now have a podcast (kind of)

🤘 We now have a podcast (kind of)

I've been teasing that for a few days, but let's say we are officially experimenting with a podcast version of our articles. To be clear, Stéphanie and I have been struggling with this idea for months as we don't have the material time to record things. We also have a

❌ Are we past social media?

❌ Are we past social media?

Facebook has been losing steam for years, and now Instagram has also started to feel stale. Twitter has objectively devolved into a toxic cesspool, and Mastodon feels like a half-backed, overly cumbersome platform. As innovators, we feel in our bones that such a market is ripe for new entrants, if