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It’s been a busy few weeks. And I can’t remember the last time I felt this energized.
Between keynote speeches, strategy workshops, executive conversations, and writing, I’ve been moving from one city and industry to the next. But months like this also give me a chance to appreciate what years of building Outthinker have made possible.
I’m continually struck by the extraordinary network of leaders and organizations we’ve brought together, the companies that invite us into their most important strategic conversations, and the opportunities that emerge when people with different experiences and perspectives come together around a shared ambition for growth.
In St. Louis, I spoke with business leaders about ownership and accountability. At Canyon Ranch in Lenox, Massachusetts, I delivered a keynote to beauty industry executives on innovation and strategic growth. In Miami, I spent three days working with 17 banking executives from the Middle East as part of a Mastercard leadership program, exploring how AI, innovation, and changing business models are reshaping financial services.
Last week, I was in Jacksonville, Florida, exploring the future of compliance before I headed back to Miami to work with a Canadian payments company exploring the future of leadership in the uncertain AI era. This week, I’ll be in London, facilitating an Outthinker roundtable with chief strategy officers and business leaders alongside the Thinkers50 London Summit.
What I love about these experiences is the opportunity to bring people together who are facing different versions of the same fundamental challenge: How do we recognize what’s changing, see the opportunities others miss, and turn those opportunities into growth?
Every room brings a different perspective. And every conversation adds something new.
Connecting Ideas Across Industries
That same curiosity has been driving my writing.
Over the past few months, I’ve had the opportunity to explore how emerging technologies, changing business models, and new approaches to strategy are creating opportunities across a wide range of industries.
I’ve written about why the care plan is not the care for Healthcare IT News, how AI can better understand the factory for IndustryWeek, and how machine vision can move from detection to action for Vision Systems Design.
In financial services, I’ve examined proximity as a competitive advantage for ADVISOR Magazine and an advantage banks were not built to match for Credit Union Times. I also explored the AI adoption paradox for StrategicCHRO360, looking at why organizations can struggle to translate technological investment into meaningful change.
These topics might seem unrelated, but to me, they’re all part of a much bigger conversation.
What works in one industry can inspire a breakthrough in another. A challenge facing a healthcare executive may have already been solved by someone in manufacturing. A strategy developed in financial services may offer an entirely new way to think about customer relationships elsewhere.
The value isn’t simply in collecting more information. It’s in making connections between ideas, people, and opportunities that might otherwise remain separate.
An Idea Worth Sharing
On November 6, I’ll be taking the stage at TEDxAstorPlace in New York City to share something I’ve been researching for the past year: how organizations solve problems, and why so many solutions remain undiscovered by the people who need them.
One of the most compelling findings is that more than 70% of the time, a solution already exists. We’re just not talking to the right people.
Consider what that means.
Globally, we invest trillions of dollars in research and development every year, with a research workforce equivalent to more than 9 million full-time researchers. That’s roughly the population of London, all dedicated to expanding what we know and what’s possible.
And yet, organizations spend enormous amounts of time and resources trying to develop answers that may already exist somewhere else. Not because the people involved aren’t capable or creative, but because knowledge and experience are often confined to particular teams, industries, or networks.
Imagine what we could accomplish if we became as good at connecting existing solutions as we are at creating new ones.
There’s an extraordinary opportunity to change that.
And it’s one of the reasons I’m so excited about what we’ve built at Outthinker.
The Power of What We’ve Built
When I founded Outthinker, I envisioned a community of leaders who would look beyond the boundaries of their own organizations and industries to see possibilities others might miss.
Years later, that vision has grown into a global network of executives, strategists, innovators, and organizations committed to challenging conventional thinking and turning bold ideas into measurable growth.
And months like this remind me just how far we’ve come.
I’m genuinely in awe of the people we’ve brought together and the caliber of organizations that have trusted us to help guide their strategic growth. From the executives who share their experience and insights so generously to the companies that open their doors to new ways of thinking, it’s a privilege to be part of these conversations.
But what makes me proudest isn’t the size of the network or the number of companies we’ve worked with.
It’s what happens because those connections exist.
New ideas become strategies. Strategies become action. People find opportunities they wouldn’t have recognized alone. And organizations discover new paths to growth by learning from one another.
That’s what we set out to build. And that’s what we’ve built.
There’s still enormous opportunity ahead of us. New industries to explore, new relationships to forge, and new ways to help leaders outthink what’s next.
But after a month like this, I find myself feeling two things in equal measure: gratitude for everything we’ve accomplished and excitement about everything still possible.
Because the true power of Outthinker has never been any one idea or individual.
It’s what we can accomplish together.
Join Outthinker today and find unexplored and unexpected opportunities.