In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen

→ WHAT IT COVERS Xiaomi CFO Alain Lam outlines how the 16-year-old company scaled from a $13 Android OS startup to a 450 billion RMB revenue ecosystem spanning smartphones, EVs, and a newly launched open-source large language model. → KEY INSIGHTS - **China Speed in EV Development:** Xiaomi went from EV decision to factory-built, market-ready vehicle in under three years by treating the car as consumer electronics — leveraging existing supply chain expertise in software-hardware integration...

→ WHAT IT COVERS Xiaomi CFO Alain Lam details how the 16-year-old company expanded from a $13 smartphone in 2011 to selling 50,000 EVs in 30 minutes in 2024, explaining the supply chain advantages, AI integration strategy, and product philosophy driving growth across phones, cars, and humanoid robotics. → KEY INSIGHTS - **China Speed Framework:** Xiaomi built its first EV, including a new Beijing factory, in under three years by treating electric vehicles as consumer electronics.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director of Serpentine Galleries and widely regarded as the world's leading art curator, shares how curation, relationship-building, and multisensory design principles translate into actionable strategies for business leaders. → KEY INSIGHTS - **Active Listening as Strategy:** Obrist has conducted studio visits daily since 1986 — roughly 14,600 visits over 40 years.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director of London's Serpentine Galleries and curator of over 40 years of studio visits, shares frameworks for creative leadership with Nicolai Tangen — covering serendipity, long-duration thinking, multisensory experience design, and what business can learn from curatorial practice. → KEY INSIGHTS - **Listening as a creative foundation:** Before designing any experience or project, start with deep listening rather than imposing a framework.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Andrea Guerra, CEO of the Prada Group, discusses luxury industry normalization after a decade of outsized growth, AI-driven personalization in CRM, the Versace acquisition rationale, and his resonant leadership philosophy across a 10-minute highlights episode. → KEY INSIGHTS - **Luxury Normalization:** The global luxury sector lost one in five consumers over three to four years following a period where the industry tripled to quintupled in size within 15 years.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Prada Group CEO Andrea Guerra discusses the luxury industry's post-boom normalization, Miu Miu's growth strategy, the Versace acquisition, and his leadership philosophy — arguing that patience, brand discipline, and returning to luxury's foundational principles of exclusivity and emotional storytelling outperform chasing trends. → KEY INSIGHTS - **Luxury Normalization Strategy:** The industry lost one in five consumers over three to four years after prices and expansion pushed...

→ WHAT IT COVERS Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency, argues the current Middle East energy crisis surpasses all historical precedents, including the 1973 and 1979 oil shocks, and outlines structural shifts expected in global energy markets. → KEY INSIGHTS - **Crisis Scale Benchmark:** The current disruption exceeds 12 million barrels per day of lost oil supply — more than double the combined losses of the 1973 and 1979 crises (roughly 5 million barrels each),...

→ WHAT IT COVERS Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency, analyzes the Middle East energy crisis as the largest in history — surpassing 1973 and 1979 combined — while diagnosing Europe's three strategic energy mistakes and mapping the structural shift toward electrification, nuclear, and advanced batteries. → KEY INSIGHTS - **Crisis Scale Benchmark:** The current Middle East disruption has removed 12 million barrels per day of oil — exceeding the 1973 and 1979 crises...

→ WHAT IT COVERS Sports psychologist Anne Marte Pensgaard explains how Norway built its dominant Winter Olympics program over three decades, covering the Norwegian youth sports model, mental focus training, psychological safety in teams, and how these principles transfer directly into business and organizational leadership. → KEY INSIGHTS - **Norwegian Youth Model:** Norway prohibits result rankings and individual awards in sports until age 12, ensuring all participants receive equal...

→ WHAT IT COVERS Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank, draws parallels between today's AI-driven fragmentation and the 1920s, while addressing central bank independence, the digital euro timeline, and her inclusive leadership philosophy. → KEY INSIGHTS - **Historical Pattern Recognition:** Lagarde maps current conditions — AI breakthroughs plus geopolitical fragmentation — onto the 1920s, when similar technological and trade disruptions preceded banking collapses and global...

→ WHAT IT COVERS Christine Lagarde, ECB President, discusses parallels between today's geopolitical fragmentation and the 1920s, Europe's productivity gap, central bank independence under political pressure, the digital euro timeline targeting 2027 pilot and 2029 full rollout, and why diversity of thinking prevents dangerous groupthink in monetary policymaking.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, explains how crypto is evolving beyond Bitcoin into a full financial system overhaul, covering stablecoins, the Everything Exchange platform, quantum computing risks, and AI adoption inside Coinbase. → KEY INSIGHTS - **Stablecoin Advantage:** Stablecoins are the only payment rail that simultaneously delivers speed (under one second), near-zero cost (less than one-tenth of a cent), and global reach.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong covers the evolution of crypto from a niche concept to a global financial infrastructure, explaining how stablecoins, tokenization, and machine-to-machine payments are reshaping finance, while discussing AI adoption inside Coinbase and his longevity biotech venture, New Limit. → KEY INSIGHTS - **Stablecoin Advantage:** Stablecoins are the only payment rail that simultaneously delivers low cost (under one-tenth of a cent per transaction), speed...

→ WHAT IT COVERS Swiss Re CEO Andreas Berger explains how reinsurance functions as a global risk diversifier, covering cyber and AI liability gaps, insurance cycle management strategies, and how Swiss Re builds AI-ready data infrastructure across its three business units. → KEY INSIGHTS - **Diversification multiplier:** Natural catastrophe reinsurance yields an 8% capital return on a standalone basis, but rises to 40% at group level through Swiss Re's global portfolio diversification.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Swiss Re CEO Andreas Berger explains how reinsurance functions as global risk infrastructure, covering natural catastrophes, cyber, AI liability, and life insurance. He details how diversification across uncorrelated business lines stabilizes returns, why population growth drives catastrophe losses more than climate change, and how data modeling enables risk prevention over pure risk transfer.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Robert Gentz, co-founder and co-CEO of Zalando, traces the company's growth from selling flip flops in 2008 to serving 50 million customers across 25 European markets, covering AI adoption, leadership evolution, and European entrepreneurship. → KEY INSIGHTS - **Flywheel scaling:** Zalando grew from €5M to €1.2B revenue in four years by expanding product selection beyond shoes into full fashion, proving that broader selection directly improves conversion rates and customer...

→ WHAT IT COVERS Robert Gentz, co-founder and co-CEO of Zalando, traces the company's growth from selling 20 flip flops daily in 2008 to serving 60 million customers across 25 European markets, covering AI-driven retail innovation, logistics infrastructure, returns reduction, and the case for building technology companies within Europe. → KEY INSIGHTS - **Flywheel Sequencing:** Build selection depth before breadth — Zalando started with hyper-specific shoe searches (e.g.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock partner, discusses AI's transformative scale across industries, why large organizations struggle with adoption, and the contrarian investment mindset behind LinkedIn, Facebook, and Airbnb. → KEY INSIGHTS - **AI Adoption Benchmark:** If frontier AI models like ChatGPT, Copilot, or Gemini are not delivering substantive value in your work — specifically in research, information analysis, or decision support — you are not experimenting...

→ WHAT IT COVERS Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock partner, discusses AI's transformative scale across industries, Europe's strategic lag in the AI race, why large organizations fail at AI adoption, the blitzscaling playbook applied to frontier AI investment, and what characteristics define successful entrepreneurs in disruption cycles. → KEY INSIGHTS - **AI Adoption Baseline:** If frontier models like ChatGPT, Copilot, or Gemini are not being used for substantive tasks — research,...

→ WHAT IT COVERS Nicolai Tangen interviews Givaudan CEO Gilles Andrier at the company's Swiss R&D center, covering how the world's leading flavor and fragrance company creates scents, develops talent, and sustains performance across four consecutive five-year strategic cycles. → KEY INSIGHTS - **Fragrance Development Process:** Givaudan operates through competitive briefs where multiple perfumers simultaneously develop concepts for clients like Tom Ford.