Beyond the Buzzwords

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English Business Careers Management Technology

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Episodes 12

Avg. Duration 18m

Activity Dormant

Since Jul 2025

Latest Episode Sep 2025

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Publishing Details

Schedule

Weekly

Format

Episodic

Consistency

100%

Hosting

feeds.simplecast.com

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About This Podcast

How to discern what matters in business and IT and find a sense in your trade. We combine practical academic theories with concrete business. If you are a bored seasoned professional or an enterprising engineering student, listen to this show. You will discover how technology and business can be combined to bring more value and sense to society. We illustrate how to avoid out-of-touch strategies that are based on, for example, transparency and pure agility. Today, work environments are often hard to work in due to unrealistic goals and organizational rigidity. This leads people to try to escape reality and to become unsure about what they want to achieve.Stop chasing unfeasible IT and engineering tactics! Now is your chance to adopt practical and grounded strategies that truly yield results. Listen to « Beyond the Buzzwords ». Instead of aiming for utopian strategies - which does more harm than good – it is time to look for a refreshing approach.This show presents the results of our applied research; guests are also invited to bring an external view to the same issues. It will open your eyes to ways to unleash your true potential in your profession. Tune in to their stories of work, perseverance, and human relationships; they will reveal how you can bring sense and develop pleasure in your profession. The host was Alain Wegmann, who recorded 12 episodes in the last year of his life. He began his career in the early 1980s. In 1984, he began working in Logitech; where, for over fifteen years, he worked in Switzerland, Taiwan and the US in engineering, manufacturing, and marketing dealing with industry giants such as Apple and IBM. In 1997, Alain shifted gears and entered academia. He returned to his alma mater, the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), where – as a professor - he taught and consulted for a quarter of a century. In academia, his quest was to teach skills and techniques for reconciling business and technology – typically IT. Alain gained intuition from his experience in industry. Then he developed – with his research group – a method called SEAM. He did this by exploring multiple disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, and even computer science 😉. He tested the applicability of the method through consulting projects. In this way, he brought a practical academic touch to concrete business issues. Alain combined his vast expertise in information technology (IT), engineering, manufacturing, and marketing to deliver informative and engaging discussions on his show. He used casual conversations to dissect complex topics. Alain simplified his knowledge in these multiple disciplines by presenting easy-to-digest information.Never settle for strategies that just look good on paper; make your processes concrete, achieve adequate precision, and capture the essential issues through the appropriate levels of abstraction. Usually, abstract reasoning is not concrete and precise reasoning cannot be abstract. This leads to paradoxes and ambiguities hence misunderstandings. Amazingly, we can work with all these qualities by recognizing these paradoxes and understanding how they are the consequences of our cultural myopia. By doing so, you can transform the paradoxes into an action plan. Some of the topics we cover are ‘service’ as a concept for reasoning about exchanges between organizations, and ‘appreciation’ as means to evaluating exchanges between organizations and their environment. As we are inspired by systems thinking and computer science, our approach speaks to engineers. We build bridges between disciplines such as strategic thinking, marketing, IT management, engineering management, and operation management. In short, we discuss service design.Join Alain and see the industry from a new perspective by re-interpreting your reality and by better understanding the laws of nature hidden in our businesses. Listen to Beyond the Buzzwords at beyond-the-buzzwords.com.

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Recent Episodes

Alain’s Last Episode - Part 2 Of His Take On Bruno Latour | S1:E12

Sep 24, 2025 12m

Alain, our dearest friend and the host of this show, passed away a few days after recording the last episode of the season. In it, he honored Bruno Latour, a fellow academic and a leading figure in…

My Take On Bruno Latour - Part 1 | S1:E11

Sep 17, 2025 17m

Bruno Latour was a French anthropologist, philosopher, and sociologist. He was born in 1947 and died at the age of 75 in 2022 in Paris. Latour was considered an iconoclast as he challenged many of…

The Use Of The SEAM Patterns In Consulting With Lucien Etzlinger | S1:E10

Sep 10, 2025 21m

In this episode, Alain Wegmann interviews Lucien Etzlinger, Senior Consultant of customer-relationship management, with whom he collaborated for over ten years on developing the SEAM method. In this…

A Project Example With Seam Patterns With Holly Cogliati-Bauereis | S1:E9

Sep 03, 2025 22m

Alain Wegmann asks Holly Cogliati-Bauereis, an English editor with whom he collaborates, to present a project for redefining her position in their department at their university. In this episode,…

1st Season Summary - Putting It All Together S1: E8

Aug 27, 2025 11m

Weeks into the Beyond the Buzzwords podcast, we're now down to the conclusion of the show's first season. What better way to celebrate this milestone than a good recap of the wisdom shared across the…

Curiosity For Exploring Viewpoint S1:E7

Aug 20, 2025 18m

In this episode, Alain Wegmann defines and discusses the concept of 'curiosity' in business and IT. He introduces the importance of curiosity in our lives as it drives personal and professional…

Actions For Changes S1:E6

Aug 13, 2025 19m

People need to start taking action to change their habits or else machines are going to take over their jobs. It is easier to change automation than it is to change people’s habits. In this episode,…

Appreciation To Assess Situations S1:E5

Aug 06, 2025 15m

In this episode, Alain Wegmann defines and discusses the concept of ‘appreciation’ in business and IT. Organizations and individuals are living beings who are in relationships. When these living…

Services To Understand Exchanges S1:E4

Jul 30, 2025 17m

In business and IT, the notion of ‘services’ is extremely popular. In this episode, Alain Wegmann defines and discusses this concept of services. Organizations and individual are living beings. All…

Operating Models And Tree Metaphors With Ernest Gmunder S1:E3

Jul 23, 2025 26m

Alain explores how Ernest Gmunder uses tree metaphors to explain the benefits of an hybrid operating model to the companies he advises. In this hybrid model, a company is considered as a “tree”. This…

Analogies and Metaphors S1:E2

Jul 16, 2025 6m

In this episode, Alain Wegmann defines and discusses the power and importance of analogies and of metaphors in our reasoning. They are central to our languages and for understanding complex concepts.…

Living Beings Everywhere S1:E1

Jul 09, 2025 15m

In this first episode of Beyond the Buzzwords, Alain Wegmann explains his approach to entrepreneurship and business and IT alignment. He illustrates how people can better work together by reasoning…

Frequently Asked Questions

How many episodes does Beyond the Buzzwords have?

Beyond the Buzzwords has published 12 episodes since July 2025, covering topics in Business, Careers.

Is Beyond the Buzzwords still active?

Beyond the Buzzwords is currently dormant with new episodes weekly. Average episode length is 18m.

How do I contact Beyond the Buzzwords for sponsorship or guest appearances?