A new business podcast, Bottleneck explores the unseen obstacles that slow progress in marketing, creative industries and culture.
The twelve-part series, produced in partnership with Sassy+, examines how operational, cultural and psychological bottlenecks can prevent organisations from achieving their full potential.
Episodes focus on topics ranging from AI adoption to scaling challenges for cult brands, to give practical insights and fresh perspectives.
Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman at Ogilvy, hosts the series alongside Elfried Samba, CEO and Co-Founder of Butterfly Effect.
Sutherland said: “One of the hardest things to get anyone to admit in business is that they are ultimately wasting their time, because the ultimate origin of the problem they are trying to solve is a pinch-point which lies somewhere outside their immediate field of responsibility.
“But, as devotees of Eli Goldratt will know, there is no point in expensively widening a road if there is a badly phased set of traffic lights 200 yards further on.
“In an age which is wrong-headedly obsessed with the indiscriminate pursuit of efficiency gains, the search for bottlenecks, and they can be psychological or attitudinal as well as operational, is almost certainly the greatest untapped source of sustainable economic growth.”
Elfried Samba added: “Bottleneck is where you’ll find solutions with a fresh, contrarian perspective. This podcast is built to make people challenge their traditional thought patterns and that’s exactly what it’s going to do… we want listeners to leave with their perspectives shifted, and plenty of those ‘ah-ha’ moments along the way.”
Confirmed guests include Krish Ramineni, founder of Fireflies.ai, discussing why AI both solves and creates bottlenecks; Jordan Schwarzenberger, manager for the Sidemen, explaining how to turn a creative powerhouse into a scalable retail brand; Margaret Heffernan, entrepreneur and academic, on leadership under pressure in volatile times; and Clark Ching, agile expert, who examines why influence and branding strategies often collapse under modern business realities.
Each ninety-minute episode is released on Sunday evenings, offering a mix of thought-provoking, practical and entertaining conversations.
The series explores the “theory of constraints,” the idea that every organisation is only as strong as its weakest link and aims to uncover hidden obstacles that stall businesses and how to overcome them.
Bottleneck is available on most podcast platforms and YouTube.
