Steve Wunker, the Managing Director of New Markets Advisors, a global consulting firm that helps ambitious innovators find their next wave of growth joins Enterprise Radio. His new book is AI and the Octopus Organization: Building the Superintelligent Firm.
This episode of Enterprise Radio is in association with the Authors and Artificial Intelligence Channels.
Listen to host Eric Dye & guest Steve Wunker discuss the following:
- What inspired you to write this book?
- Your book opens with the extinction of the ammonite and the survival of the octopus. Why is that metaphor so central to how you see the future of business in the AI era?
- You write that AI isn’t just a tool—it’s a force that reshapes how organizations think. What do you mean by that?
- You argue that companies shouldn’t just ‘AI-ify’ existing processes. What’s the danger in trying to retrofit AI into the old way of doing things?
- What does it mean to build an ‘Octopus Organization’? Could you give us a real-world example of what that looks like in action?
- You emphasize the changing role of middle managers. What do they look like in an AI-driven future?
- If I’m an executive listening to this right now, what’s one practical first step I should take to become more of an Octopus Organization?
Steve Wunker is the Managing Director of New Markets Advisors, a global consulting firm that helps ambitious innovators—including 29 of the Fortune 500—find their next wave of growth. He’s founded four pioneering companies, developed one of the world’s first smartphones, and worked with AI initiatives for over a dozen years. A longtime collaborator of Harvard Business School legend Clayton Christensen, Wunker has advised hundreds of organizations and is considered one of the world’s leading authorities on innovation. He’s written over 100 articles for Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and others, and authored four bestselling books. His new book is AI and the Octopus Organization: Building the Superintelligent Firm (Menlo Park Books; September 8, 2025).
Website: aiandtheoctopus.com | stevewunker.com
The views, ideas, thoughts and opinions expressed on any program are those of the persons appearing on the program and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of The Enterprise Podcast Network – EPN.
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