New on the Outthinkers Podcast, supported by LHH, host Kaihan Krippendorff speaks with Scott Snyder about why most companies are failing to get real value from AI — and why the problem has nothing to do with the technology.

During the conversation they unpack why incumbents keep repeating the same mistakes across every major technology wave, and what it actually takes to move an organisation from experimentation to genuine transformation.

Scott Snyder reflects on the pattern he’s watched play out across mobile, e-commerce, and now AI, why large companies consistently underestimate their own advantages, and how leaders can shift their people from fear and resistance to genuine excitement about working alongside AI.

The conversation covers:

• Why your business strategy has to come before your AI strategy — and how AI should amplify what you already do well, not replace the thinking behind it

• How incumbents can use their hidden advantages — proprietary data, scale, and ecosystem access — to out-innovate startups rather than be disrupted by them

• What it takes to move people through the mindset curve from openness to accountability, and why incentive design is the missing piece most organisations overlook

Additional Resources:

Book: Your AI Life — https://yourai.life/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottsnyder5g/
LHH: lhh.com

Thank you again to our sponsor, LHH.

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

Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva is a globally recognised reinvention strategist, four-time author, and founder of the Reinvention Academy. A former chaired professor at a business school in the Slovenian Alps, she coined the role of Chief Reinvention Officer — unifying strategy, innovation, and change management into a single connected discipline. She has worked with organisations across mining, telecom, financial services, and the public sector, including steering a London-listed mining and metals company through the largest industry crisis in modern history. Her weekly newsletter, Reinvention Weekly, reaches business leaders across the globe.
Most companies know change is accelerating — but they're still operating as if it's temporary. The assumption that things will eventually "go back to normal" is quietly killing organisations that could otherwise survive. A handful of companies have built genuine reinvention capability and are riding waves of disruption ahead of their competitors. Most are still firefighting, waiting for certainty that will never come.
In this episode, we explore why the business model playbook built in the 20th century is dangerously mismatched for today's environment — and what leaders need to think, build, and kill in order to stay viable.
In this episode we cover:

The concept of "metaruption" — why black swan events are now arriving in flocks, and what it means for long-term strategy
Why Reinvention 1.0 (the once-every-40-years big pivot) is no longer sufficient — and what Reinvention 2.0 looks like in practice
The three interlocking disciplines — anticipate, design, and implement — and why most organisations are weakest at the first
Why the shelf life of your decisions is shrinking, and how to build a system that accounts for it
Where to actually start a reinvention journey — including the "kill session" practice that reduces overload before adding anything new

Additional Resources:

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/nadyazhexembayeva
Reinvention Academy: reinventionacademy.com
Newsletter: Reinvention Weekly — subscribe at reinventionacademy.com

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

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.

Follow us at outthinker.com/podcast