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Most companies call it innovation when they add a feature. Real disruption is when you build the thing that makes the old one irrelevant.

That’s where this conversation starts. JJ de la Torre, founder and CEO of **Raven**, joins us to talk about what leaders consistently get wrong about digitalization, transformation, and “innovation theater”—and how to re-anchor teams around revenue and outcomes instead of decks and demos.

We dig into why the classic services model keeps breaking down. Strategy writes slides. Product ships features. Marketing wins awards. No one owns the result. JJ walks through Raven’s end-to-end model where think, build, and sell operate as a single accountable system. It sounds obvious. It’s not. That shift rewires how ideas get vetted, how products are built, and how success is measured.

Then we tackle AI—minus the hype. The real opportunity isn’t cost cutting. It’s redesigning the business model. Where can AI remove an entire step in the value chain? Enable performance-based pricing? Create revenue streams that didn’t exist last year? If AI isn’t changing how you make money, it’s just a faster expense line.

At the core of the conversation is design as a discipline for transformation. JJ’s book, **Transformation Designed**, frames design as a blueprint for results: center on the customer, validate with behavior, and turn insight into something teams can actually ship. We talk about why design-led companies outperform, how to avoid CES-style “innovation” nobody needs, and the hardest move of all—detachment. Killing today’s winner to create tomorrow’s business, the way Apple let the iPhone eclipse the iPod.

We wrap with what’s next for Raven: co-investment and variable models that share risk and upside with clients across the US, Europe, and Latin America. If you’re planning a 2026 reorg, here’s the gut check: does it change what you build, how you sell it, and how you get paid? If not, you’re just rearranging furniture.

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