How Core Strength (Not Speed) Drives Real Transformation

Fast Company Innovation Festival: Where Urgency Meets Purpose

At the Fast Company Innovation Festival in New York this September, a powerful paradox emerged across two days of keynotes and panels: while everyone's racing to transform, whether through AI adoption, hypergrowth, or strategic exits, the real winners are those who build unshakeable foundations first.

Sara Dotterer and Alana Haramaty immersed themselves in insights from founders, CEOs, and thought leaders wrestling with the same challenge: how to harness transformation without losing what makes you valuable in the first place.

Two sessions crystallized this tension perfectly, offering complementary perspectives on building from the core.

Brené Brown: "Settle the Ball"

In launching her new book Strong Ground, Brené Brown delivered a masterclass on why most organizations confuse motion with progress. Her central metaphor (drawn from sports) resonated throughout the conference:

"We need to settle the ball. We're going too fast. We're just kicking up here because we're scared."

Brown argued that organizations mistake mere change for true transformation: "We call all change transformation because adaptive change isn't sexy. But real transformation means breaking what doesn't work, protecting what does, and helping people through the uncertainty."

Her warning about today's AI rush landed with particular force. With 90% of AI investments struggling to deliver value, she observed that leaders chase strategies without grounding them in purpose: "Too many leaders just say, 'Get an AI strategy by tomorrow. I don't care what it is…just have one.' We need to settle the ball."

She defined four repeatable "small-muscle" skill sets for courageous leadership:

1. Clarify and operationalize core values
2. Rumble with vulnerability in uncertainty and risk
3. Build explicit trust
4. Reset after failure and disappointment

The message: ground yourself before you scale.

The Exit Strategy Panel: Building Value Through Trust

If Brown provided the philosophical framework, the exit strategy panel with founders from Poppi, Olive & June, Nutrafol, and Phlur delivered lessons every B2B leader should internalize. These founders who've collectively built and sold companies worth billions shared a counterintuitive truth: stop optimizing for the exit, start focusing on connecting with your customers.

Allison Ellsworth of Poppi explains that the company reserves 20% of its strategy for real-time adaptation — the flexibility to pivot based on customer signals, not just quarterly plans, drove exceptional growth.

The panel's most powerful lesson came from Giorgos Tsetis of Nutrafol: "The word that always comes to mind is relevance. Are you still speaking to the consumer?" His company waited eight years before expanding distribution channels, constantly asking: "Does it make sense for the customer?" This patience in resisting investor pressure to scale prematurely mirrors the discipline often needed to successfully expand into new markets or launch new products.

Sarah Gibson Tuttle of Olive & June addressed what so often plagues growing firms — the venture capital pressure to chase growth metrics over customer value: "It puts founders on this hamster wheel of numbers and revenue. Actually, grow in the most organic way possible." Her point resonates where forced growth often means taking on bad-fit clients or racing to add features that dilute core value.

The irony? By building sustainable value rather than optimizing for exits, they all achieved successful acquisitions. The lesson for B2B: whether you're building toward an IPO, acquisition, or long-term independence, customer success remains the only metric that matters.

San Francisco: The AI Conference Reality Check

While New York focused on core strength, Jay DiPietro found the same theme emerging at the AI Conference 2025 in San Francisco. Amid the buzz about autonomous agents and the next wave of AI transformation, a sobering message cut through: most companies are sprinting before they can walk.

"Start with the business problems," Jay summarized. "If a challenge is deterministic, classic automation may be better than an AI agent. Too many firms are forcing agents onto problems they don't fit."

The high failure rates for corporate AI projects aren't evidence that AI doesn't work — they're proof that technology without foundation fails. As Jay observed from the expo floor: “It's still early days, and the market is evolving so rapidly that it's challenging to distinguish between proof-of-concept and production-ready solutions. The pace of innovation is both exciting and demanding."

Technology as an Extension of Self

The Concept Bureau essay "The Brain Is a Map" adds philosophical depth to these practical insights. Its core thesis:

"All technology is just an extension of the self. Fire extended our digestive system. Clothing extended our insulation. Horses extended our legs. We don't invent new needs; we invent new ways to meet old ones."

Up to now, technology has extended the body. With AI, we're extending the brain: attention, decision-making, imagination, memory, social coordination, and self-awareness.

The parallel to both Brown's "small muscles" and the founders' community obsession is striking: technology becomes meaningful only when it grows from a well-understood human center.

The Red Thread: Core as Competitive Advantage

Whether it's:

• Companies like Poppi building flexibility into strategic planning rather than rigid roadmaps
• Organizations like Nutrafol choosing product-market fit over premature scaling
• Firms adopting AI first in specific use cases before enterprise-wide rollouts
• Leaders operationalizing values into measurable business practices and governance

The same principle emerges: enduring growth starts at the core.

Brown illustrated it with football's tush push play: a team's ground force multiplies only when every player stays rooted. The exit panel proved it with results: by building for long-term customer success rather than short-term valuations, they created the very value that made them attractive acquisitions.

Four Grounded Moves for AI-Age Leaders

Drawing from these converging insights, B2B leaders can strengthen their core now:

1. Anchor AI in business outcomes. Like Nutrafol's eight-year patience, align every pilot to specific client needs and measurable ROI, not just innovation theater.
2. Invest in "small-muscle" capabilities. Train teams in prompt engineering, data governance, and what Brown calls "rumbling with vulnerability" — especially critical when AI changes team dynamics.
3. Reserve capacity for adaptation. Apply Poppi's 20% rule to your product roadmap — leave room to respond to market shifts and client needs rather than locking into rigid annual plans.
4. Build domain expertise before scale. As Lim advised: establish deep competency in your core offering before chasing adjacent markets or new technologies.

From Core Strength Comes Speed

The real promise of transformation, whether through AI, scaling, or strategic partnerships, isn't in headline-grabbing moves, but in deeper capability that actually connects with your customers. It's extending human capacity while preserving what makes us human.

Brown said it best: "Good leadership is poetry and plumbing. And it starts with self-awareness: knowing why you show up like a maniac some days and being willing to get coaching to stay grounded."

By settling the ball, building the small muscles of courage, clarity, and community, we'll be ready to sprint when it matters.

About the Authors

Sara Dotterer, Alana Haramaty & Jay DiPietro lead brand and innovation strategy at Ricciardi Group, helping financial services and consumer brands translate disruptive technologies into growth that lasts.

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