Ep. 54 Bill Fischer and Simone Cicero on Haier and the entrepreneurial organisation

Bill Fischer is a Professor of Innovation Management at IMD and Simone Cicero is the cofounder of Boundaryless and co-creator of the Platform Design Toolkit. We talk about what they have learned from years of studying and collaborating with the Chinese company Haier Group, whose Rendanheyi organisational model has been praised internationally as one of the most revolutionary management ideas of the 21st century. Our conversation explores the extraordinary leadership of CEO Zhang Ruimin, eliminating bureaucracy, designing an organisation to enable thousands of self-managed microenterprises, and what this model means for the future of work.

How to follow Bill and Simone:

Twitter: @bill_fischer and @meedabyte

You can read the transcript version here.

Resources:

Link to sign up for Bill and Simone’s RenDanHeYi masterclass in October (link gives you a 25% discount with the code LEADERMORPHOSIS) The EEEO Toolkit Draft Download webpage (a set of tools to support the creation of an Entrepreneurial Organisation) The Boundaryless Haier webinar YouTube playlist Corporate Rebels’ post about Haier Bill’s chapter ‘Ecosystems as an engine for innovation and learning’ in the book ‘Ecosystems Inc’ Bill’s IMD profile where you can find more of his publications Simone’s interview with Bill on the Boundaryless podcast Alicia Hennig‘s paper on Daoism in Management