Ryan Hamilton is an associate professor of marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School and co-author of The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things. He is also co-host of the podcast The Intuitive Customer, and author of a book by the same name. He has consulted on branding with companies like Walmart, FedEx, Home Depot, Caterpillar, ConAgra, Cigna, Visa, and Ipsos, among others.

To start a successful brand, you usually need to focus in on a specific, often niche, customer. But to grow the brand, you need to expand your customer base. A few brands have done this well (e.g., Starbucks or Apple) which have this loyal passionate base of fans that stick with them as the brands become ubiquitous. But, more often, brands fail to scale because the new customer they need in order to scale are too different from those core customers. They have different values or needs or beliefs.

In this episode, we dive into this dilemma, discussing how to predict, preempt, and manage the conflicts that will arise between a brand’s initial customers and the more varied customer segments it must attract in order to scale.

In this episode we cover:

• This concept of “CSRM”—customer segment relationship management”
• Examples of companies who have managed the growth dilemma well and those that have not—and what insights we can draw
• A practical framework outlining the four types of customer relationship scenarios you may be facing, and what strategies to deploy for each one
• How brands must be intentional about the type of value they offer

Episode Timeline:
00:00—Highlight from today's episode
01:14—Introducing Ryan + the topic of today’s episode
03:44—If you really know me, you know that...
05:12—What's your definition of strategy?
05:52—The basis for Ryan's second book, The Growth Dilemma
08:34—Breaking down an "identity of culture," within a brand
11:07—Have brands moved from functional to identity-based culture?
15:30—The concept of CSRM: Customer Segment Relationships Management (and the 2 x 2 matrix)
25:25—Breaking down the different types of customer segment conflicts
38:07—How do you know when you need to "fire" a customer segment?
41:19—How do the principles talked about in this episode apply to the employee segments?
43:30—How does the age of hyper-customization affect customer relationship management?
46:02—How can people continue learning from you?______________________________________________________________
Additional Resources:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-hamilton-49b3321/
Book website: https://www.growthdilemmabook.com/

Thank you to our guests, thank you to our executive producer, Karina Reyes, our editor, Zach Ness, and the rest of the team. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. I'm your host, Kaihan Krippendorff. Thank you for listening.

Follow us at outthinkernetworks.com/podcast

Gina O’Connor is a professor at Babson College, where she teaches on the topics of Corporate Entrepreneurship and Breakthrough Innovation in large mature companies. Previously, she had a long career at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Gina has co-authored three award-winning books on Breakthrough Innovation and published numerous papers in leading journals including Sloan Management Review, Harvard Business Review, RTM and Journal of Product Innovation Management, among others.

Her mission is to help large established companies learn how to renew themselves through organic growth via game-changing, strategic innovation. She is a firm believer that to be successful, organizations must develop an innovation function, complete with its own people, processes, metrics and culture that operates within the company to translate emerging science, technology and business models into new platforms of growth that will fuel the company’s future health in spite of itself.

In this discussion, we fashion our conversation by following her fascinating journey through three distinct phases of studies over years of research—the foundation of her books—that evolved as her research revealed new findings. Our conversation covers more than we can summarize in this short introduction, but among these insights we discuss:

• What her team’s research discovered are the constraints to innovation—and they’re more often beyond just technical, contrary to what many think
• The three distinct competencies of innovation—discovery, incubation, and scaling—that businesses must develop, each with different people, processes, and metrics
• The concept of “domains of innovation intent,”—untapped new markets in which a company can explore and potentially unlock a wide portfolio of opportunities
• The key learnings leaders should take away from her team’s extensive studies to tackle an often-overlooked component of innovation: talent management

Episode Timeline:
00:00—Highlight from today's episode
01:14—Introducing Gina + the topic of today’s episode
03:36—A quick summation of Gina's three books—and the research phases within each one
10:59—The second phase of research and book: capabilities
18:10—A case study that led to discovering "domains of innovation intent"
20:26—The third phase of research and book: talent management
24:07—Flipping failures into a portfolio of opportunities
27:10—Ecosystems as a byproduct of innovation
32:27—How are the concepts of an agile workforce and upskilling interrelated?
36:25—What does a leader need to think about to successfully lead these changes?
40:15—How can people continue learning from you?

______________________________________________________________
Additional Resources:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gina-o-connor-047b862/
Link to books

Thank you to our guests, thank you to our executive producer, Karina Reyes, our editor, Zach Ness, and the rest of the team. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. I'm your host, Kaihan Krippendorff. Thank you for listening.

Follow us at outthinkernetworks.com/podcast

Robert E. Siegel is a lecturer in Management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he has taught various courses ranging from Systems Leadership to Financial Management for Entrepreneurs to The Industrialist’s Dilemma to Corporations, Finance and Governance in the Global Economy. He is also a Venture Partner at Piva Capital and a General Partner at XSeed Capital, and sits on multiple Boards of Directors and has led investments in Zooz, Cirrosecure, and Lex Machina, among others.

His multi-lens background and approach have afforded Robert a deep, intricate understanding into leadership in our constantly in flux world today, and how it requires an ever-more nuanced approach.

In this discussion, we dive into key insights from his most recent 2025 book, The Systems Leader: Mastering the Cross Pressures that Make or Break Today’s Companies, a perfect complement to his first book, The Brains and Brawn Company. We discuss the constant web of dualities that the modern systems leader confronts on an ongoing basis, as well as:

• How while our business frameworks have long been trending towards change-driven frameworks with terms like “ambidextrous organization” and “exploitation vs. exploration,” world parameters have grown increasingly complex, requiring a different set of leadership skills
• The key characteristics of a systems leader, including the 5 cross-pressures that these leaders must learn to balance to be effective.
• The four abilities that leaders must develop, including developing a product manager mindset—the ability to live at the intersection of customer needs, market demands, and the inner workings of your company

Episode Timeline:
00:00—Highlight from today's episode
01:30—Introducing Robert + the topic of today’s episode
05:32—If you really know me, you know that...
07:48—What is your definition of strategy?
08:44—An overview of Robert's first book, The Brains and Brawn Company
15:30—What are some key questions in your toolkit to become better at self-diagnostics
17:50—Can you explain your quote: "leadership is ability to restrain in response to a certain stimulus"?
21:30—Can you define a systems leader for us?
23:42—What can we learn from the product manager's mindset?
25:35—Can you give us an overview of the 5 cross-pressures leaders face?
29:28—How is the landscape of investors changing under these pressures?
32:25—The effect of AI on the workforce, and the role of leaders
37:45—What is your advice to someone looking to shape strategy in light of these cross-pressures?
40:39—How can people continue learning from you?

______________________________________________________________
Additional Resources:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertesiegel/
Link to website: https://www.robertesiegel.com/the-systems-leader

Thank you to our guests, thank you to our executive producer, Karina Reyes, our editor, Zach Ness, and the rest of the team. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. I'm your host, Kaihan Krippendorff. Thank you for listening.

Follow us at outthinkernetworks.com/podcast