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

Linda Hill is a Harvard Business School professor and one of the world’s leading thinkers on leadership and innovation. Jason Wild is the CEO and founder of WISE (Wild Innovation and Strategy Excellence) and a long-time innovation and strategy leader inside global incumbents. Together (with co-author Emily Tadards), they’ve spent more than a decade studying how established organizations actually turn innovation into something that scales—and distilled the lessons into their new book, Genius at Scale.

The core idea is simple, but uncomfortable: in a world shaped by AI, complexity, and accelerating change, innovation rarely succeeds as a solo act. The winners don’t just build better products—they build better ecosystems, with leaders who can co-create across boundaries (inside the enterprise and far beyond it).

In this conversation, Linda and Jason explain why ecosystems are becoming the true unit of innovation, why culture is an unfair advantage competitors can’t copy, and why the most essential innovation leaders are often the least visible. They walk through their ABC framework—leaders as Architects, Bridgers, and Catalysts—and what breaks when any one of those roles is missing.

If you’re trying to move faster, partner smarter, and scale what works, this episode gives you a practical lens for leading through uncertainty, building the social fabric for innovation, and creating the kind of movement others choose to join.

In this episode we cover:

• Why ecosystems (not firms) are becoming the unit of innovation—and what that changes for leaders
• The ABC framework: Architect, Bridger, Catalyst (and how these roles show up in real organizations)
• Why “culture” is a competitive advantage—and how leaders accidentally undermine it
• The underappreciated “bridger” role—and why org design and incentives often punish it
• Practical starting points: clarity of purpose, surfacing constraints, and creating faster learning loops

Episode timeline:

00:00 — Cold open: why no company can go it alone

00:30 — Sponsor: LHH

02:00 — “If you really know me…” (Linda + Jason)

03:35 — Definitions of strategy (optionality, choices, and adaptability)

08:40 — Why they wrote Genius at Scale

12:30 — Why ecosystems are rising (speed, capability gaps, AI)

17:00 — Can incumbents adopt an ecosystem approach?

22:30 — ABC framework: Architect, Bridger, Catalyst

28:40 — The most underappreciated role: the Bridger

33:30 — Why bridging is a career risk (and how to fix incentives)

41:45 — A practical tool: a “constraints dashboard” + radical transparency

45:30 — Where leaders should start

54:50 — How to keep learning from Linda + Jason

59:20 — Closing + thanks

Additional Resources:

Linda Hill: https://www.linkedin.com/in/linda-hill-hbs/

Jason Wild: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonwild/

Book: Genius at Scale — https://geniusatscale.com/

Sponsor: LHH Executive Solutions — https://www.lhh.com

Thank you 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