Incorruptible: The Chapter The Lean Startup Missed with Eric Ries

About this episode

Eric Ries discusses his new book 'Incorruptible' and the importance of trustworthiness in business governance.

Fresh out of the studio, Eric Ries — author of the new book Incorruptible, founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, co-founder of Answer.AI, and author of The Lean Startup — joins Bernard Leong to discuss his blueprint for building mission-controlled companies that resist financial gravity. Eric explains why trustworthiness is the most underrated asset in business and why success, far from being a shield, makes companies a target worth capturing. He walks through the governance fortresses that have kept Costco, Novo Nordisk, and Patagonia true to mission for decades, and argues that today's so-called best practices have destroyed billions in shareholder value. The conversation turns to AI: which parts of the Lean Startup it accelerates, which parts it cannot, and why validated learning still lives only between the ears. Eric closes with a radical redefinition of profit as the maximization of human flourishing, and a challenge to Asia-Pacific leaders to leapfrog the governance failures the West is about to live through. "We're helping people create this asset and we're teaching them the wrong idea. We're teaching them that success will protect them. But that's backwards. Success…

People in this episode

Host: Bernard Leong

Guest: Eric Ries

Topics covered

• business ethics
• governance
• financial strategy
• AI in business
• mission-driven companies
• trustworthiness in business

Keywords

• Incorruptible
• Lean Startup
• business governance
• financial gravity
• trustworthiness
• AI
• human flourishing
• mission-controlled companies

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Long-Term Stock Exchange, Answer.AI, Costco, Novo Nordisk, Patagonia

Books & works: The Lean Startup, Incorruptible

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