"If you show me a company that succeeded with every experiment, I'll show you a company that's very poor at picking their experiments." — Jason Goldberg

In this episode, Jason "Retail Geek" Goldberg — Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis Group and co-host of the top-ranked Jason & Scott Show — makes the case that most companies are asking the wrong question about AI. A 30-year commerce pioneer who launched Blockbuster's first e-commerce site in 1995 and has since driven billions in online revenue across hundreds of clients, Jason brings rare long-view perspective to the agentic commerce moment. We dig into why Walmart went from banning AI to hitting a trillion-dollar market cap, why fast followers beat first movers, and what the one question Doug McMillan asked in every meeting has to do with all of it.

What You'll Discover:

[02:16] Is Agentic Commerce Real — Or the Next Blockchain?→ Jason's framework for separating genuine disruption from hype, and why he thinks agentic is one of only five true disruptions in 6,000 years of commerce

[08:27] The Walmart Story: From "AI Is Illegal Here" to $1 Trillion→ What a single question from Doug McMillan — asked in every meeting — unlocked inside the world's largest retailer, and what it reveals about the job of a CEO in volatile times

[14:16] Efficiencies vs. New Behaviors: The AI Trap Most Companies Fall Into→ Why optimizing what you already do will save you money this year and cost you everything in five — and the consumer behaviors that will disintermediate your shelf entirely

[19:06] The Gartner Hype Cycle as a Leadership Tool→ How to use the trough of disillusionment to your advantage, and why being unrealistically optimistic about the future is just as dangerous as ignoring it

[23:11] The ROI Trap: Why You'll Always Choose the Oak Tree Over the Acorn→ The structural reason most companies starve their best future bets — and what exceptional organizations do differently

[25:15] Why Ivory Tower Innovation Almost Always Fails→ The REI green vest story: what happens when the scientists solve the wrong problem, and where the real innovation instinct actually lives in your organization

[32:43] The Fast Follower Advantage — and the Regret Question→ Why you haven't missed the agentic window, what AltaVista vs. Google tells us about timing, and the one question to ask yourself before leaving any strategy meeting

Key Takeaways:

• Being first rarely wins. Being prepared to move fast when the signal is clear almost always does.
• The CEO's real job in disruption isn't picking products — it's being the chief change agent for 1.6 million people who learned from their predecessors.
• The ROI framework will always favor your existing business over your future one. Exceptional companies build a different budget category for experiments — and expect most to fail.

About Jason Goldberg:Jason "Retail Geek" Goldberg is the Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis Group, where he advises the world's largest retailers and brands on digital transformation. He co-hosts the top-ranked Jason & Scott Show podcast and has been named a leading global retail influencer by Rethink Retail for six consecutive years.

What happens when the cost of intelligence drops to zero? The only thing that matters is knowing how to give the right instructions.

In this episode, Andreas Bachmann – co-founder of Adacor, a managed cloud and critical infrastructure provider serving banks, automotive, healthcare, and energy clients across Germany – shares what 22 years of deliberate, founder-led growth actually looks like. We explore the real tension between innovation and zero-tolerance uptime, the co-founder crisis that almost broke the company, and why Andreas believes the primary job of every knowledge worker in five years won’t be doing the work – it’ll be managing the agents doing it for them.

What You’ll Discover:

[00:01:19] Innovating When Failure Is Not an Option → How Adacor runs experiments for critical infrastructure clients who can’t afford a single hiccup – and the mental model that makes it work

[00:05:30] The Sustainable Growth Playbook → Why Andreas chose deliberate, step-by-step growth over hypergrowth – and how that decision made Adacor more competitive, not less

[00:13:49] The Co-Founder Crisis Nobody Talks About → At 40–50 people, Adacor fractured into silos and the founding team needed “marriage counseling” – what they decided, and who stepped back

[00:17:34] Self-Organization Without Chaos → How Adacor implemented OKRs, dailies, and retrospectives in a high-stakes environment – and the one thing that makes retros actually stick

[00:23:37] Building a Human-Centered Tech Company → From family compatibility programs to volunteer firefighter support – why Andreas treats the company as the strong one, not the individual

[00:27:26] The AI Question: Bullshit or Real? → Why Andreas went all-in on AI in 2022, how Adacor hacked EU innovation grants to build an AI team years early, and why he skipped the GPU commodity race entirely

[00:34:16] The Future of Work Is Managing Agents → Andreas’s thesis on what happens when intelligence is automated and essentially free – and what human value actually looks like on the other side

Key Takeaways:

• Sustainable growth is a competitive advantage in high-trust industries – adding people too fast breaks the thing clients pay you for
• “Fast fashion software”: non-developers are already using AI to write and discard code; this is a glimpse of where all knowledge work is headed
• The best retros are useless without a committed “what do we do about it now?” – every retrospective at ATCO must produce 1–3 actionable initiatives
• The co-founder transition from parallel silos to one clear direction is one of the most underreported breaking points in company building
• The new leadership superpower isn’t having all the answers – it’s knowing when to step back and trust the people who do

About Andreas Bachmann:

Andreas is co-founder and CEO of Adacor, a German managed cloud and critical infrastructure company he’s been building for over 22 years with a deliberate focus on stability, human-centered culture, and innovation that doesn’t break things. He’s also a founding force behind Media Monster, an initiative supporting mental health and work-family compatibility in tech.

“As we move up the pyramid of command and control, people stop telling us the truth. We as leaders actually become dumber.” – What if everything you learned about leadership is based on a system designed for sovereigns managing illiterate peasants?

In this episode, Peter Laughter – a recovering CEO, Quaker, and self-described student of human connection – challenges the foundations of how we lead organizations. Drawing from his own transformation (from anxiety-ridden command-and-control leader to champion of distributed power), Peter lays out a radically different vision: one where your job as a leader isn’t to have the answers, but to make sure the people who do can actually speak up.

What You’ll Discover:

[00:00] Why Disruption Is Just Evolution – And Why We Keep Fighting It

→ The biological case for why struggle is the feature, not the bug – and why the gap between technological waves has collapsed

[06:00] The Deming Effect: How Market Forces Will Force Leadership Change

→ Why big organizations can’t change from within, and how a wave of AI-displaced workers will build something better from scratch

[12:00] Why Bayer’s Top-Down Decentralization Might Be Doomed

→ The critical difference between mandating a system and growing one – and lessons from Zappos’ Holacracy disaster

[18:00] The Becky Moment: When an Employee Called Out Her CEO’s Core Values Violation

→ Peter’s personal turning point – how getting overruled by a team member killed his anxiety and changed his entire leadership philosophy

[24:00] How to Actually Start: The “What Are You Seeing?” Framework

→ A dead-simple Monday-morning practice that shifts you from having the plan to gathering perspectives

[30:00] Why Consensus Is Violence and Decisions Should Be Made by Framework

→ How Peter built a values-based decision system where employees could challenge the CEO – and why it produced better outcomes

[36:00] Recruiting Is Broken: Why You Should Hire Happy People, Not Desperate Ones

→ Why starting the recruiting process before you need someone completely changes who you attract

[40:00] The Misconception That Hurt Most: “I Was Supposed to Be The One”

→ Peter’s answer to what he got wrong – and why he’s optimistic about the future despite everything

Key Takeaways:

• Command and control doesn’t just limit organizations – it actively makes leaders dumber by cutting off honest feedback
• You don’t need everyone on board to change an organization – 20-30% creates a cascade (Greg Satel’s Cascades model)
• Start any leadership challenge by asking “What are you seeing?” and actually listening for the brilliance in the answer
• Replace consensus (which beats ideas down to the least common denominator) with values-based decision frameworks

The gap between idea and reality is now nearly zero – and that changes everything about who can build what

About Peter:

Peter is a former CEO turned leadership advisor whose work centers on what he calls “abundant leadership” – the recognition that power and authority are fluid, not fixed. Rooted in Quaker decision-making principles and real-world experience building distributed organizations, he helps leaders create environments where emergent leadership can thrive.