In this episode of FOMO Sapiens, Patrick McGinnis sits down with Eric Ries, creator of the Lean Startup method and author of the New York Times bestseller The Lean Startup, to discuss his bold and urgently needed new book, Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad and How Great Companies Stay Great. Eric's core argument is as simple as it is unsettling: the corruption that destroys great companies is not primarily a problem of bad actors or weak ethics; it is structural. The systems governing organizations, ownership, incentives, accountability, board composition, and decision-making quietly reshape behavior over time until even principled leaders are producing outcomes they never intended. Drawing on two decades of work with founders, CEOs, and investors, and on vivid case studies from Costco, Patagonia, and H-E-B, Eric makes the case that incorruptibility is not a fantasy — it is a design problem, and builders have more agency than they think.
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