Peter Weinberg is the founder of Evidenza, an AI-powered synthetic research platform, and a former LinkedIn executive where he co-founded the B2B Institute. Over a decade at LinkedIn, Peter helped reframe how B2B brands think about growth — shifting the industry's focus from bottom-of-funnel conversion toward brand building, mental availability, and reaching buyers before they enter the market. His work draws heavily on the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute's frameworks, and he's collaborated with some of the world's largest B2B organisations on marketing strategy and segmentation.

Most market research never gets done. It's too slow, too expensive, and the people you most need to reach — CFOs, in-house counsel, niche enterprise buyers — simply don't take surveys. So companies either skip research entirely or make decisions based on what the sales team heard from the three customers who called last week.
Synthetic research changes that equation. By using AI to simulate statistically representative populations of real customer types, organisations can now get directionally accurate, quantitative customer intelligence in a fraction of the time and cost of traditional research. Peter's company, Evidenza, has validated this approach across dozens of markets and categories — consistently finding 80–95% alignment between synthetic and human survey responses.

In this episode, we explore what that means for how companies understand customers, structure their innovation funnels, and rethink the long-standing political battle between marketing and sales over who really owns the voice of the customer.
In this episode we cover:

What synthetic research actually is — and why "lab-grown customers" may be more reliable than survey respondents clicking through for an Applebee's gift card
The accuracy question: how closely AI-simulated responses match real human data, and what it means when they diverge
How synthetic research could reshape the innovation funnel — moving from testing 3 ideas a year to testing thousands
Why the real opportunity isn't hyper-personalisation, but finding the mass-market commonalities that drive scale
The adoption barrier that has nothing to do with AI scepticism: organisations that wouldn't act on good market research even if you handed it to them

Episode Timeline:

• 00:00 — Highlight from today's episode
• 00:34 — Introducing Peter + the topic of today's episode
• 02:55 — If you really know me, you know that...
• 03:45 — What's your definition of strategy?
• 06:04 — Peter's decade at LinkedIn and the case for B2B brand building
• 07:41 — The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute: mental and physical availability
• 10:24 — What is synthetic research?
• 13:16 — Accuracy, speed, and cost: the three metrics that matter
• 14:54 — When human surveys lie (and synthetic respondents don't)
• 17:49 — Can you use synthetic research for internal adoption challenges?
• 19:59 — How synthetic research widens the innovation funnel
• 23:27 — Who owns the voice of the customer: marketing vs. sales
• 26:50 — Micro-segmentation vs. mass marketing — which does AI actually favour?
• 30:59 — Barriers to adoption: AI sceptics, soft rejectors, and market orientation
• 33:48 — When AI outperforms humans with AI (the doctor study)
• 35:57 — How to follow Peter and find Evidenza

Additional Resources:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/weinbergpeter/
Website: evidenza.ai

Thank you to our executive producer Zach Ness, our producer Nazanin Homayoun Jam and our editor James Pearce. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow, download, and subscribe. I’m your host, Kaihan Krippendorff—thank you for listening.

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Lew Frankfort is the former CEO who helped turn Coach from a small, niche leather goods brand into a global powerhouse—scaling it from roughly $6M in revenue to a $5B publicly traded company and helping define the category of “affordable luxury.” Before Coach, Lew built a consumer-first worldview in public service in New York City, including leading Head Start and day care services.

Scaling is often framed as “more”—more customers, more channels, more products. But what if the real work is protecting the core identity that made you win in the first place while everything around you shifts? In this conversation, Lew shares how he spotted Coach’s “cult following” early, why owning the customer relationship through catalog and retail became a strategic turning point, and how brands build trust, durability, and emotional attachment at the same time.

If you’re trying to grow without diluting what makes your brand distinctive—this is a playbook on customer intimacy, category strategy, and leadership that blends creativity with disciplined execution.

In this episode we cover:
• Why “strategy is the bridge between vision and execution”
• How Lew identified Coach as a “cult” brand—and what that signaled about demand
• The “brand equities” framework: underlying trust, foundational durability, and emotional connection
• Why direct-to-consumer (catalog + owned retail) let Coach control storytelling and service
• Lew’s “magic and logic” leadership model for scaling with creativity and discipline
• What it takes to be a true intrapreneur inside a larger organization

Episode Timeline:
00:00 Welcome and Sponsor

00:44 Meet Lou Frankfort

03:31 Family and Values

06:05 Defining Strategy

06:56 From Public Service

09:19 Coach Cult Following

12:34 Brand Equity Triangle

16:20 Going Direct to Consumer

19:10 Magic and Logic Leadership

21:48 Becoming CEO at Coach

26:17 Intrapreneur Mindset

28:36 Designing for Growth

32:25 Advice and Closing

Additional Resources:
Book: Bag Man (Lew Frankfort)
LHH: https://www.lhh.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lew-frankfort/

Thank you again to our sponsor, LHH. Thank you to our guest, Lew Frankfort.

Thank you to our executive producer Zach Ness, our producer Nazanin Homayoun Jam and our editor James Pearce. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow, download, and subscribe. I’m your host, Kaihan Krippendorff—thank you for listening.

Follow us at outthinker.com/podcast

Joe Pine is the co-author of The Experience Economy—and one of the thinkers who gave leaders a language for why “services” weren’t the end of the story. In this episode, Joe returns with his next major thesis: we’ve entered the Transformation Economy, where the customer is no longer buying inputs (features, service hours, or even memorable moments), but paying for outcomes—lasting change.

We unpack what makes a transformation fundamentally different from an experience, why experiences are increasingly commoditized, and why the biggest opportunities now sit in helping people (and organizations) become who they want to become. Joe also shares the practical implications: how leaders can ladder up from “jobs to be done” into deeper aspirations, why identity change sits at the center of transformation, and how pricing shifts when your business is accountable for outcomes.

In this episode we cover:
•Why transformations are “sustained through time,” not just memorable moments
•The idea that all transformation is identity change (and what that means for strategy)
•“You are what you charge for”: shifting from time-based pricing to outcome-based pricing
•Why the Transformation Economy is already here (and why it’s accelerating now)
•The four spheres of transformation—and why they all point toward human flourishing

00:00 — Welcome + Episode Setup

01:36 — “If you really know me…” (Anti-social introvert)

03:10 — Strategy = the decisions you actually make

04:18 — Defining “Transformation” (guiding outcomes that last)

06:06 — Experience vs Transformation (customer becomes the product)

08:28 — Why the Transformation Economy is already here

10:00 — Why now: experiences are commoditizing (Starbucks + COVID shift)

13:16 — Identity change at the center of transformation

17:46 — From “cobbling” to integrated transformation programs (GLP-1 / Calibrate)

21:54 — Pricing in the Transformation Economy (outcomes + human flourishing)

34:22 — Where to start + resources (encapsulation, purpose, Substack/toolkit)

Additional Resources:

Joe Pine’s Transformation Economy Substack: https://transformationsbook.substack.com/
Strategic Horizons: https://strategichorizons.com/
Strategic Horizons “Integration” page + Transformation Toolkit: https://strategichorizons.com/integration
Joe Pine on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joepine/

Thank you to our executive producer Zach Ness, our producer Nazanin Homayoun Jam and our editor James Pearce. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow, download, and subscribe. I’m your host, Kaihan Krippendorff—thank you for listening.

Follow us at outthinker.com/podcast