Red Queen Podcast

Dec 03 2024 9 ep. 74 mins 9

Red Queen Podcast artwork

A book club turned podcast on the stories behind the world’s most innovative companies.

Three operators chat about the people, products, and playbooks that create enduring institutions.

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Estée Lauder

Dec 03 2024 69 mins

This episode takes us into the world of Estée Lauder, a $32B beauty empire built by one of the most charismatic figures in business history. What drew us to the story wasn't just the impressive numbers, but the sheer magnetism of Estée herself. She embodies that rare combination of innovator who understood both product excellence and the art of selling. Her journey isn't just ab

ASML

Nov 18 2024 91 mins

Why are we doing an episode about ASML, a business that the BBC referred to in 2020 as "a relatively obscure Dutch company,"? It started with host, Eeke's, curiosity about an iconic company from her homeland of the Netherlands. But the deeper we descended into the ASML world of semiconductors, chips, and lithography, the more we all realized that we had something pretty special on

Trader Joes

Sep 13 2024 82 mins

Today we are going deep on Trader Joe's and I'll kick things off with a quote from their employee handbook. "Why do customers shop at Trader Joe's? Our people are warm and friendly. It's fun and an adventure. They find unexpected products. They'll experience cheap thrills. Our people are helpful and knowledgeable.They know that we have tested each product to ensure quality and sa

GE Part II

Aug 06 2024 81 mins

We are back for part two of the GE story. In the first episode, we covered GE as a company that effectively embraced research and invention within a broader organization. In this episode, we're going to talk about everyone's favorite or least favorite topic: Capital M Management. How did GE develop a practice of management that was copied by every CEO at the time? Why did compani

GE Part I

Jul 01 2024 77 mins

It’s easy to think about GE as a company in decline–after all, it’s about to be broken up officially into tiny pieces. But there are two big themes that make the story of GE relevant for today’s companies–and what got us excited to dig in. First, GE is a company founded on invention. GE is a research lab plus company that managed to commercialize its research. We have so

Marriott

Jun 04 2024 89 mins

Marriott has hotels in 139 places including the Faroe Islands, Rwanda, Greenland, and Kathmandu. They employ over 148 thousand people. That’s more than twice as many people as Facebook! And they have a $73B market cap. But what got us curious about Marriott is not the fancy hotels, although we love those too, it’s that Marriott didn’t fundamentally invent any new technologies

Behind the Name: The Red Queen Effect

May 06 2024 2 mins

How the Red Queen Podcast got its name. We're not just glamorous ladies into chess. Our inspiration comes from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass. Specifically, the moment where Alice meets the Red Queen...

NASA

May 05 2024 83 mins

Space is so back. And it’s not just because everyone’s favorite billionaires are getting in the ring. There are real scientific, technological, and military implications of our presence in space and it got us wondering–what is the history of the organization that first got us there–NASA? And what do we have to learn from an institution that undertook one of the most ambitio

LEGO

May 05 2024 95 mins

Everyone has a LEGO story, but not that many people know the story of LEGO. So while we’ve always loved the toy, it wasn’t until we started researching for this episode that we became obsessed with the (still entirely family owned!) company. Yes, LEGO is the biggest and most profitable toy company in the world–nearly twice the size of Mattel. But what makes LEGO so lovable is