79: The agile incumbent: talking e-bikes with Ian Kenny and Chris Yu of Specialized

This week, Oliver interviews Chris Yu, Chief Product & Innovation Officer and Ian Kenny, global marketing for the Turbo e-bike brand at Specialized. They talk about how incumbent bike manufacturers are thinking of electrification, how that’s changing how the company is thinking about the job-to-be-done for their customers and what role companies like Specialized can play in the discussion to push Micromobility forward.

Specifically, they dig into:

- what differentiates the Specialized brand in terms of positioning, company ownership structure and customer type.

- how their full stack approach, paired with their scale, compares to the rest of the bike industry.

- How Specialized think about the Innovators Dilemma, and what framing they use to encourage self disruption within the firm to ensure that they can meet evolving customer needs and wants.

- for design, what are the variables that matter for customers? They talk about the Levo family of bikes, and the learnings that can be ported over to other sectors.

- How they’re thinking about urban or local transport, including a discussion on the competition such as Vanmoof.

- How the business model to service the ‘consumption of miles’ might change the structure of how Specialized

- The journey that Specialized made in e-bikes, including its first efforts as early as 2010.

- How they’re seeing the supply-chain base change as the industry matures around ebikes/electrification.