“I see dead people.”
That was Nancy Dawes’ answer when Bruce Vojak asked her how she did it. The chemical engineer who took Olay from a dying brand to a billion-dollar product line wasn’t being mysterious — she was telling him she saw patterns no-one else did. And the real burden, she realised, wasn’t seeing them. It was getting an entire organisation to see them too.
In part two of our Serial Innovators series, Bruce Vojak returns to unpack the chapter most innovators learn the hard way: the politics. In over 90% of a mature firm, resources, people and management attention are locked onto today’s products. Breakthrough innovation has to fight all of it — for capital, for headcount, for strategic oxygen — and that fight is political by design.
Bruce is co-author of Serial Innovators: How Individuals Create and Deliver Breakthrough Innovations in Mature Firms (with Ray Price and Abby Griffin), founder of Breakthrough Innovation Advisors, and former Associate Dean for Administration at the University of Illinois College of Engineering.
In this conversation, Bruce reveals:
- The Galileo scenario — why a serial innovator looks at the same data as everyone else and sees a completely different solution
- Why politics loses its negative meaning the moment you realise it is the only way to actually serve the customer
- Strategic coherence vs tactical coherence — and the one question to ask before you push any breakthrough idea into your firm
- “Crossing the bridge” from the naïve view (invention is sufficient, the manager will recognise it) to political pragmatism
- The four elements of trust — competence, reliability, openness, concern — that buy a serial innovator the right to be heard
- Why every breakthrough story Bruce found came from an emergent team, not a pre-formed innovation team
- The “Stone Soup” model of recruiting allies one favour at a time
- The Disneyland queue problem of selling internally — you think you’ve got buy-in, and then there are ten more people behind the next corner
- Soft influence (planting seeds, telling stories, “people tolerate my conclusions but act on their own conclusions”) and hard influence (data, prototypes, signed purchase orders, customer pull-through)
- “The best marketing research is a signed purchase order” — the line Bruce still uses as a filter today
- Buckminster Fuller’s outlaw quote, and his trim tab metaphor — how one person, properly placed, can move the whole ship
- Chuck House’s HP defiance and the line that captures every serial innovator who ever risked their job for the work: “I wasn’t trying to be defiant. I just wanted a success for HP. It never occurred to me it might cost me my job.”
00:00 Sponsor Message
00:25 Why Breakthroughs Stall
01:15 Meet Bruce Vojak
02:36 Seeing Hidden Patterns
06:14 Innovation Lenses
09:28 Strategic vs Tactical Coherence
10:37 Reframing Politics
11:57 QWERTY Switching Costs
14:27 Owning the Political Work
18:00 Trust and Early Wins
21:14 Crossing the Bridge
30:04 Convincing Many Stakeholders
31:40 Engaging Allies Slowly
33:01 Emergent Teams Not Assigned
38:21 Innovation as Team Sport
39:10 Positioning for Strategy Fit
43:26 Too Many Innovators
44:38 Proof via Purchase Orders
46:25 Outlaw Area and Trim Tab
50:17 Politics Navigation Diagram
53:15 Manager Perspective Teaser
55:46 Wrap Up and Sponsor
About Bruce Vojak Bruce is co-author of Serial Innovators and Innovation Code, founder of Breakthrough Innovation Advisors, and former Associate Dean for Administration at the University of Illinois College of Engineering. He advises executive teams and boards on how to find, support and unleash serial innovators inside mature firms.
Website: https://breakthrough-innovation-advisors.com
Book: Serial Innovators: How Individuals Create and Deliver Breakthrough Innovations in Mature Firms
About The Innovation Show The Thinkers50-recognised podcast hosted by Aidan McCullen — author of Undisruptable, keynote speaker and former pro athlete — where square pegs find their place in a world of round holes. Conversations with the world’s leading authors, scientists and practitioners on disruption, innovation, transformation, leadership, AI, creativity and the ideas shaping tomorrow.
This series is brought to you by Kyndryl, who run and reimagine the technology systems that drive advantage for the world’s leading businesses. Kyndryl helps leaders harness AI-powered consulting and managed-service capability for smarter decisions, faster innovation and lasting competitive edge. Learn more about Kyndryl and the Kyndryl Institute at https://www.kyndryl.com.
Subscribe to the Thursday Thought on Substack for a chance to win a copy of Serial Innovators, with thanks to Kyndryl: https://thethursdaythought.substack.com
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