The Truth About Innovation: Do Fewer Things Better
1 hr 0 min
In this episode, former CEO of Bang & Olufsen and Triumph Motorcycles, Tue Mantoni, shares deep insights into leadership, governance, and scaling small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with our host Hanane Fathi Roswall. Drawing on his extensive experience across iconic consumer brands and high-growth boards such as Soundboks, Joe & The Juice, and Lakrids by Bülow, Mantoni discusses his venture, Tuesday, which connects ambitious entrepreneurs with hands-on board members. Tue explains why traditional academic governance often falls short in founder-led and family-owned businesses, emphasising empathy, human dynamics, and active involvement between formal meetings. He outlines how organisations can leverage the Japanese Ikigai framework to turn authentic passion into commercially viable innovation, illustrated through Soundboks’ evolution from a music festival speaker project into an international audio brand. The conversation also tackles broader macroeconomic challenges, including Europe’s risk-averse investment culture, the risk of losing high-growth scale-ups to the US, and the critical imperative of attracting global talent. Finally, Tue Mantoni delivers a pragmatic guide to simplifying organisational complexity, urging business leaders to ruthlessly eliminate value-destroying initiatives, align their strategic horizons with underlying ownership structures, and focus on doing fewer things better.
