“Fewer, bigger bets” sounds like disciplined strategy. So why can it be such a dangerous approach to growth? In this episode, Michelle Loret de Mola and Dev Patnaik unpack how a push for focus can quietly send companies into harvest mode. They explain why the biggest opportunities leaders can see are usually rooted in the business they already have, why outsized expectations can kill promising ideas before they have time to develop, and why future growth demands a certain amount of inefficiency. Along the way, they revisit Larry Page spending Friday afternoons with Google’s fledgling Android team, Ford experimenting its way toward a low-cost electric truck, and Interval Research rejecting nearly every idea for not being big enough while helping fund the research that became PageRank. Michelle and Dev also explore how leaders can separate the core business that needs reliability from future growth that needs experimentation, and why it is better to focus the challenge than dictate the path. Plus, headlines from the future: Gen Z entering its drinking era, an AI model breaking out of its sandbox to improve its score, and Cleveland Clinic delivering prescriptions by drone. Because the goal is not to abandon big bets. It is to run enough small experiments to discover which bets deserve to become big.

#FutureFocusedLeadership #Leadership #BusinessStrategy #GrowthStrategy #Innovation #Experimentation #StrategicForesight

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The Jump Podcast

The Jump Podcast features Dev Patnaik in dialogue with Michelle Loret de Mola. This is the conversation for future-focused leaders thinking about strategy, culture and leadership. The world is crazy. Everything seems to be changing, and not always in a good way. Today, business leaders are struggling to figure out how to avoid becoming the next Kodak, Blackberry or Blockbuster. But fear not, dear listener. Things can get better. People can do better. And the world can be better.

Jump Associates

Jump is the world’s leading independent strategy and innovation firm. We work with the world’s most admired companies on their most important growth challenges. Using a future focused approach to strategy, we’ve helped these firms grow their businesses in times of change.