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Max Noble
Lecture · Max Noble

Strategy and innovation

The tools senior strategy teams use, taught through companies that bet big on something new, and what the numbers said first.

How it opens

The story the room hears first.

Skellefteå, Sweden, 28 December 2021. Northvolt assembles its first battery cell. Its customers have already ordered more than $30 billion of them. Through 2023, the factory sends one truck maker about a thousand cells a week, roughly one truck’s worth. Then Northvolt borrows $5 billion to make the factory bigger. A German chancellor starts the piling machines for the next one. It is a fine plan for a company that can already make batteries. Ten months after the loan, Northvolt asks an American court for protection. By the end of this chapter, you will see the gap between the first cell and the next factory before the bankers do. Make it work before you make it big.Law XXVIII: Make It Work Before You Make It Big.

In your room, the opening can be a company your audience knows, from your country or your industry.

The three laws

What the talk is built on.

Law XXVIII

Make It Work Before You Make It Big

Prove it works before you build it big.

Read the law →
Law XXI

Sell the Service Before the Box Gets Cheap

What to sell when rivals learn to make your product for less.

Read the law →
Law XXXI

Make Every Bet Earn Its Second Cheque

How to fund a new idea without funding its failure.

Read the law →
What the room leaves with

Three things to use on Monday.

  • Which tool fits which question, and which to leave in the drawer
  • A test for when an idea is ready to scale
  • Turning analysis into a decision

For universities, business schools and executive programmes. Danish or English. Now booking autumn 2027.

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Max Noble · Novo Nordisk · 3 min