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.

/ Inspiration

🤖 The future always starts in crappy mode

When I started to travel and regularly work in Shanghai back then, many things were surprising in how technology was developed and incorporated into everyday life. Many things that would later make China a tech super-power were junky at best. But they were there, burgeoning from duct tape, exposed wires,

/ Inspiration

🐥 The charm of Elon

As much as I've tried to disconnect from Twitter lately, I'm catching myself going to it far more than I would like. A few days before Christmas, I ended up listening in a Twitter space to a few Silicon Valley engineers talking about scale and complexity in tech ventures and

/ Hot Takes

🎄 That's a wrap for 2022!

Before I pause posting for a few days, I wanted to reflect on what posting five articles a week for more than nine months achieved (including starting to grow organically a long-form newsletter discussing our tools and sharing market analysis) and what's next. Keep in mind that besides tracking the

/ Hot Takes

🎓 The disruption of the MBA

The beginning of 2023 will be my next fully remote MBA class for students in Shanghai with Kedge Business School and Jia Tong University. As such, I keep reflecting on the value of what we deliver as guest lecturers or full-time professors in such programs. Business Model Design Class -

/ Business models and Strategy

🍔 Critical mass and dilution point of social networks value

Ten years ago, Twitter was already messing with its users and decided to forbid third parties from using its API. At the time, I was already writing about the notion of critical mass for social networks. I was also trying to introduce the idea of a dilution point for the

/ Business models and Strategy

🕶️ My 12 predictions for 2023

Let's get in end-of-the-year mode with my batch of predictions for 2023. I tried to write them down as fast as possible, without thinking about them much, to see what was spinning in my brain's background. So here goes: 1. Infrastructure eats the world. This is a teaser of sorts,

/ Inspiration

🤖 What if the future was about learning to talk to machines?

As we are approaching the end of the year and our 1,000th blog article (🤯), I wanted to focus more on how we perceive and use the future as innovators.

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/ Inspiration Featured

🟢 The future is a mystery, rarely a puzzle

As we are approaching the end of the year and our 1,000th blog article (🤯), I wanted to focus more on how we perceive and use the future as innovators.

/ Inspiration

🤖 Beware of the apostles of the future

As we are approaching the end of the year and our 1,000th blog article (🤯), I wanted to focus more on how we perceive and use the future as innovators.

/ Inspiration

🤖 The future is never hindered by a lack of technology

As we are approaching the end of the year and our 1,000th blog article (🤯), I wanted to focus more on how we perceive and use the future as innovators.

/ Inspiration

🤖 Dipping your strategic toes in the future

As we are approaching the end of the year and our 1,000th blog article (🤯), I wanted to focus more on how we perceive and use the future as innovators.

/ Hot Takes

🚀 The acceleration fallacy

These last few days, there have been several comparisons about how fast ChatGDP reached 1 million users, and you probably caught a few of those. ChatGPT has crossed 1M+ users in just 5 days. To compare, it took Netflix 41 months, FB - 10 months, and Instagram - 2.5

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/ Business models and Strategy Featured

🟢 When luxury innovates the second-hand market

Changing your posture in the market, extending new offers to some of the customers you were not reaching out to directly, or simply innovating your services rarely feels groundbreaking. Yet it's a vast field of untapped opportunities.

/ Business models and Strategy

💩 The truth about the first-mover advantage

In 1988, Marvin B. Lieberman and David B. Montgomery, both eminent professors at Stanford Business School, theorized the notion of first-mover advantage (FMA) in a ground-breaking article. The idea gets hold of the collective mind of innovators and business strategists as a core law of nature: pioneering firms would generate

/ Hot Takes

🤯 Midjounrey, Chatgpt, and the pressure cooker effect of rupture innovation

All the recent commotion about midjourney, dall-e, stable diffusion or (even more recently) chatgpt is rather interesting. ChatGPT launched on wednesday. today it crossed 1 million users! — Sam Altman (@sama) December 5, 2022 The current hype illustrates perfectly the core laws of rupture innovation. 1. Ruptures are fuelled by a

/ Hot Takes

🥔 The teslanomics of electric trucks

You have probably read that Tesla is finally delivering its full electric class 8 semi-trailer truck, only three years late. And among the many reasons this truck has been delivered with such tardiness, one of them is probably worth remembering: the battery physics and economics simply didn't work. The magic

/ Tools and Frameworks

🧭 7 Questions to map your future

I evoked last week how clever expedients are useful for innovators, and I wanted to share one example this Friday. It's a simple brain twister Shell developed when bright people were roaming their offices. It can be used as a game or interactive facilitation technique about how a team deals

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/ Inspiration Featured

🟢 How (removing) friction is the secret sauce to digital innovation

Digital has become such a force that we've become blinded and frequently fail to understand the core mechanisms at play. Sometimes though, these mechanisms cut both ways. Let's discuss how removing friction is critical to leverage digital and can also become toxic.

/ Hot Takes

🔋 The Model Y as a Big Mac index

I wanted to share an interesting snapshot from Bloomberg discussing the cost of a Tesla Model as a Big Mac index. The Big Mac index is a proxy often used to discuss purchasing power parity between different countries by comparing the price of the famous burger. Given that McDonald's is

/ Tools and Frameworks

🧐 The problem(s) with ideation in innovation programs

Whether you deal with an intrapreneurship program or another flavor of corporate innovation, chances are that you are starting with an ideation phase. Over the years, the very existence of such an initial step has become a vividly blinking red flag for me. The reasons are that ideation is... 1.

/ Business models and Strategy

⛽️ Is there a future for the gas station?

The demand for gas is now on a stable downward trajectory. In 2030, McKinsey estimated a drop to $79bn, down from $87bn in 2019. The venerable gas station is among the many businesses and infrastructure impacted, and companies like Shell are now paying attention. With consumers and professionals transitioning to

/ Hot Takes

👋 You can now find me on Post

As I briefly explained a few days ago, I don't intend to spend much more time on Twitter with the current BS going on (which is for me removing the few moderation rules and decency safe-guards that led to banning Trump and a few others). For the same reason, I'm

/ Hot Takes

💩 The cost of the World Cup

Qatar has spent $220bn to build an entire city and its various infrastructure to host the Mondial World Cup. The more realistic cost is estimated at a whopping $300bn by Bloomberg. What Qatar Built for the Most Expensive World Cup EverQatar has spent $300 billion preparing for the FIFA World

/ Business models and Strategy

⚖️ Laws & Regulation vs. Innovation

Last June, I discussed some elements of the thermodynamics of innovation and how laws and regulations are very often the limiting factors to getting change in the market. In that regard, the seemingly never-ending race to get autonomous vehicles on the road is a perfect example. If the technology was

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/ Culture and Leadership Featured

🟢 Adapting your innovation process to different team cultures

Today it's all about a more nuanced and practical discussion on how to apply innovation frameworks depending on which type of team culture you're dealing with. And because we never have much time in innovation, let's boil it down to three types of culture.