PRODUCT, CAPABILITY & STRATEGY | FORTESCUE / SYMPHONIA
Phil Delalande
Phil Delalande works at the point where organisations must move from possibility to committed action.
He currently focuses the majority of his time at Fortescue, operating inside a complex, high-consequence environment where new capability must take shape within real constraints. Alongside this, through Symphonia, he develops products and works with senior leaders at inflection points where decisions carry long-term organisational consequence.
Phil has built and exited founder-led ventures and established new product and design capabilities within enterprise environments. His experience spans startup and scale-up contexts across healthcare, education, mining and energy, consistently working at the intersection of executive decision-making and governance accountability.
Keynote: Zero to One: Building on the edge of certainty
Why Corporate Innovation Stalls Before It Starts
“Zero to one” is often associated with startups — urgency, limited resources and the necessity to act. But starting something new inside an established organisation demands a different kind of resolve.
Having built and exited founder-led ventures, and operated within enterprise environments like Fortescue’s, I’ve seen both contexts sit at the edge of certainty — just under different pressures. Startups confront existential risk. Corporates navigate governance, reputation, capital allocation and shifting internal relevance.
In both environments, momentum changes at the same point: when exploration must give way to commitment.
Corporate initiatives rarely stall for lack of ideas or capability. They stall at the moment a decision would make success measurable, trade-offs visible, and retreat politically expensive.
This session contrasts founder and enterprise zero-to-one environments to examine what it truly takes to originate something new inside constraint — and how leaders can recognise when refinement has quietly become avoidance.
For those operating in complex systems, this is a candid look at where progress actually begins.