Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez is author of Powered by Projects, Leading Organizations in the Transformation Age, the Harvard Business Review Project Management Handbook, the featured HBR article The Project Economy Has Arrived, as well as five other books. Antonio coined the concept "the Project Economy," on which his book is based. His research and global impact have been recognized and included in the top 50 most influential management thought leaders by Thinkers50. He is the fellow and Former Chairman of the Project Management Institute, currently VP of the APM Association, he is the creator of the Brightline Initiative, founder of Projects&Co, and co-founder of the Strategy Implementation Institute.

Antonio is a prominent advocate of the idea that our business model paradigms are quickly changing—the future of work is the Project Economy, the idea that instead of companies based on hierarchy and operations, they will be dominated by project-driven teams and environments.

This premise has a profound impact on every area of a business—and strategy, management and every department of each enterprise will need to adapt accordingly.

In this episode we discuss:

• How digitalization and the acceleration of AI has compounded this quick change from a focus on operations and repetitive work to quick execution, project-driven teams
• How by 2030, 70% of work will be project-based work, fundamentally changing how businesses are structured and managed.
• How the era of hierarchal org structure hinders growth in this new era, as successful project execution depends on co-creation and stakeholder buy-in
• How the role of the PMO will change from being operations-driven to more strategic, and how you can best support these roles in the transition

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Episode Timeline:

00:00—Highlight from today's episode
01:31—Introducing Antonio + the topic of today’s episode
04:14—If you really know me, you know that...
05:03—What is your definition of strategy?
06:12—The difference between strategy and execution
07:40—Understanding the project economy
10:43—The shift from operations to projects in organizations
12:18—The cross-functional nature of projects
14:44—The future of the PMO office
17:20—Creating intensity in organizations
20:36—Common mistakes leaders make in executing strategy
24:06—Motivation for writing "Powered by projects"
26:36—Key insights from Antonio’s leadership sessions
28:30—How can people follow you and continue learning from you? ______________________________________________________________________________________
Additional Resources:

Personal website: antonionietorodriguez.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/antonionietorodriguez
Link to book: Powered by Projects

Thank you to our guest. Thank you to our executive producer, Karina Reyes, our editor, Zach Ness, and the rest of the team. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. I'm your host, Kaihan Krippendorff. Thank you for listening.

Follow us at outthinkernetworks.com/podcast

Devin DeCiantis is the co-author, with Ivan Lansberg, of the 2024 book THE ENDURING ENTERPRISE: How Family Businesses Thrive in Turbulent Condition. He is a Managing Partner at Lansberg Gersick Advisors (LGA), an advisory and educational partner trusted by many of the world’s largest family enterprises.

Devin’s work and focus is on the financial, organizational, and strategic aspects of this business structure—the family enterprise. Devin brings his background in corporate strategy, economic analysis and investment banking to his work with these family businesses, family offices and family foundations.

Several unique attributes family businesses set them apart from the various corporate forms, public or private, corporations or LLCs or partnership. Many of these differences build a natural immunity and competitive advantage of sorts that traditional corporations struggle to build.

In this episode, we discuss some the key findings in his book, including:

• What enduring lessons family businesses can teach regular corporations about planning for not just quarters, but quarter-centuries
• The unique advantages—and weaknesses—of family businesses, whose longevity often span decades, or even centuries
• The unique role family businesses play in economies, especially in markets like South Asia, East Asia, and Latin America
• The 7 stabilizing strategies that these businesses employ effectively, as they often are built amidst emerging and frontier economies where basic infrastructure and resources are often lacking

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Episode Timeline:

00:00—Highlight from today's episode
01:31—Introducing Devin + the topic of today’s episode
03:29—If you really know me, you know that...
04:20—What is your definition of strategy?
06:30—Historical context of family owned businesses
08:55—Examples of major family owned businesses
10:58—What motivated Devin to study family businesses
13:08—Family owned businesses in more volatile environments
16:06—7 stabilizing strategies family owned businesses consistently deploy
17:51—Differentiation strategy
20:31—Resilience in family-owned enterprises
23:08—Modularity as core driver of growth and stability
26:33—How family owned businesses benefit from modularity
29:26—How non-family-owned organizations can leverage modularity
31:24—Strategic redundancy in family owned businesses
33:44—How can people follow you and continue learning from you?

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Additional Resources:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/devindeciantis
Link to book: THE ENDURING ENTERPRISE

Thank you to our guest. Thank you to our executive producer, Karina Reyes, our editor, Zach Ness, and the rest of the team. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. I'm your host, Kaihan Krippendorff. Thank you for listening.

Follow us at outthinkernetworks.com/podcast

Sandra Matz is the David W. Zalaznick Associate Professor of Business at Columbia Business School, in New York, where she also serves as the Director of the Center for Advanced Technology and Human Performance.

As a computational social scientist with a background in psychology and computer science, Sandra studies human behavior and preferences using a combination of big data analytics and traditional experimental methods. Her research, and the topic of this podcast, uncovers the hidden relationships between our digital lives and our psychology with the goal of helping businesses and individuals make better and more ethical decisions.

We dive into some fascinating insights from her January 2025 book, MINDMASTERS: The Data-Driven Science of Predicting and Changing Human Behavior, exploring the concept she coined of “psychological targeting,” a discipline that reveals how our digital footprints expose intimate aspects of our psychology and can be used to shape decisions—from what we buy to how we vote.

In this podcast, we delve into this topic, discussing:

• How digital technologies and AI are giving us unprecedented abilities to understand and target specific people in specific states
• The profound implications, for better or worse, of this capability
• Some exciting—and concerning—examples of what this might look like, from diagnosing mental health to crafting highly-personalized automated marketing campaigns
• How this hyper-personalization and new AI has the potential to influence, change and even control our behaviors
• What companies can learn from Apple’s “Evil Steve” test in designing products and experiences to safeguard future ethical misuse of data
• A glimpse into what could be a solution to the ethical dilemma of the capabilities Sandra studies: federated learning—a new form of data modeling that protects the individual’s data while delivering high-quality insights

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Episode Timeline:
00:00—Highlight from today's episode
01:26—Introducing Sandra+ the topic of today’s episode
03:48—If you really know me, you know that...
04:26—What is your definition of strategy?
05:10—The two steps of psychological targeting
06:05—What has changed in how psychological targeting is implemented?
08:41—How can we differentiate extroverts from introverts?
10:09—The manners in which psychological targeting can be intrusive
10:55—Replicating old-school communication online
12:30—Dynamic personality states
15:52—What are 'good' applications of psychological targeting?
18:19—How organizations can ensure they use psychological targeting ethically
20:40—Safe ways to collect data without compromising individual privacy
23:05—Can psychological targeting influence internal company behavior?
25:42—How companies can align themselves with diverse individual identities
26:48—What skills and capabilities should organizations develop to adapt to AI-driven personalization?
26:26—How can people follow you and continue learning from you?

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Additional Resources:
Personal website: sandramatz.com
Link to book:

Thank you to our guest. Thank you to our executive producer, Karina Reyes, our editor, Zach Ness, and the rest of the team. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. I'm your host, Kaihan Krippendorff. Thank you for listening.

Follow us at outthinkernetworks.com/podcast