Eric Ries — author of Incorruptible and founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange — joins Aidan McCullen to expose the hidden forces that corrupt mission-driven organisations. From financial gravity and the golden goose problem to the LTSE ambush and the Costco governance fortress, this is a blueprint for building an incorruptible organisation that lasts.
Posted 3 months ago Tagged Abbie Griffin AI hiring bias Aidan McCullen air cover management apprenticeship model breakthrough innovation Bruce Vojak bureaucracy innovation burnout innovation career development innovation Clayton Christensen command and control leadership Corporate Innovation customer empathy Demco SAIC developing serial innovators fuzzy front end golden handcuffs hard assignments HR screening innovation identifying serial innovators incentive design Innovation Culture Innovation Leadership Innovation Management Innovation Mindset innovation podcast Innovation Strategy innovator development innovator traits J work Kyndryl managing serial innovators mature firms innovation New Product Development phase gate process pheasant metaphor pi shaped workers pie shaped workers Raymond Price relational management Serial Innovators book serial innovators research spinout innovation systems thinking The Innovation Show war room research
Bruce Vojak closes our three-part Serial Innovators series with the playbook for finding and protecting breakthrough talent: the five core traits to look for, the four engagement filters that actually identify a serial innovator, why HR and AI hiring screens filter them out, and the manager behaviours — air cover, patience, no “J work” — that keep them from walking out the door.
Posted 3 months ago Tagged Abbie Griffin innovation Aidan McCullen breakthrough innovation politics Bruce Vojak Change Management Corporate Innovation crossing the bridge innovation Disruption how to get ideas approved innovation in large companies innovation podcast Innovation Strategy intrapreneur leadership podcast organisational politics serial innovators Serial Innovators book The Innovation Show Thinkers50
Most innovators believe a great idea will sell itself. Bruce Vojak, co-author of Serial Innovators, joins Aidan McCullen to reveal why that belief will get you fired — and how the rare few who repeatedly deliver breakthrough innovations inside mature firms actually navigate the organisational politics that stop everyone else cold.
Posted 3 months ago Tagged Abbie Griffin Aidan McCullen breakthrough innovation Bruce Vojak Corporate Innovation create market acceptance customer empathy Design Thinking find the right problem fuzzy front end hourglass innovation model Innovation Culture Innovation Leadership Innovation Mindset innovation podcast innovation process innovation self-diagnostic Innovation Strategy invent and validate it's them not me Kyndryl mature firms innovation New Product Development NPD process organisational innovation Raymond Price serial innovators Serial Innovators book stage gate process The Hourglass Model Vojak The Innovation Show
Bruce Vojak returns for a short bonus episode on the Hourglass Model — the descriptive state diagram he and his co-authors built to explain how serial innovators actually move from a customer problem to a launched product, without the prescriptive rigidity of stage-gate.
Posted 3 months ago Tagged breakthrough innovation Bruce Vojak customering Iain Mcgilchrist mature firms MP5 model Procter & Gamble Product Development S-Curve serial innovators stage gate Thinkers50 Tom Osborne
Bruce Vojak, co-author of Serial Innovators, explains why roughly 1 in 500 employees inside a large mature firm — with no formal mandate, often almost fired — create most of the breakthrough products that fund everything else.
Posted 4 months ago Tagged Adaptive Leadership ambiguity Bureaucracy change leadership Change Management change theater changemakers conflict deviance Failure growth mindset influence Innovation Jeff DeGraff Leadership Learning Mindset Organisational Change organisational culture paradox paradoxes of change paradoxical mindset Personal Development Resilience self-change Staney DeGraff strategic thinking The Art of Change Transformation
Organisations love innovation, but they hate their innovators.” Jeff and Staney DeGraff close out the DeGraff trilogy with The Art of Change — the paradox mindset, the seven paradoxes, and why the man who saved Operation Warp Speed got passed over for promotion.
Posted 4 months ago Tagged Aidan McCullen biomimicry innovation business podcast Change Management CREATE framework creativity is a skill creativity podcast creativizing divergent and convergent thinking everyday creativity innovation podcast Jeff DeGraff Jeff DeGraff creative mindset leadership podcast SCAMPER technique six thinking hats Staney DeGraff the creative mindset book The Innovation Show
Creativity is not a gift. It is a skill. Jeff and Staney DeGraff return for part two of the DeGraff trilogy with The Creative Mindset — and the six-step CREATE method (Clarify, Replicate, Elaborate, Associate, Translate, Evaluate) that turns ordinary teams into compounding inventors.
Posted 4 months ago Tagged constructive conflict Innovation innovation archetypes Innovation Culture Innovation Mindset Innovation Strategy Jeff DeGraff Leadership Organisational Change Podcast Staney DeGraff The Innovation Code The Innovation Show
What if innovation doesn’t come from alignment—but from constructive conflict? In this episode of The Innovation Show, Aidan McCullen explores The Innovation Code with Jeff and Staney DeGraff, revealing how breakthrough ideas emerge when opposing perspectives collide. Learn the four innovation archetypes—Artist, Engineer, Athlete, and Sage—and how to harness tension to drive creativity, adaptability, and long-term success.
Posted 4 months ago Tagged AI podcast AI strategy ai transformation AI workflows artificial intelligence leadership autonomy in organizations Business Innovation decision making AI Digital Transformation distributed intelligence future of organizations Future Of Work Innovation Leadership Jonathan Brill leadership AI Management Strategy octopus organization Organizational Design Steven Wunker
What if your organisation could think and act like an octopus? In this episode, Steven Wunker and Jonathan Brill explore how AI is reshaping organisations through distributed intelligence, autonomy, and faster decision-making. Discover why success with AI depends less on technology—and more on rethinking culture, structure, and how decisions are made.
Posted 4 months ago Tagged Barry Nalebuff Business Strategy cooperative game theory decision making fair negotiation game theory Leadership negotiation strategy negotiation tactics Podcast principled negotiation Split the Pie The Innovation Show value creation
What if negotiation wasn’t about winning—but about fairness? In this episode, Barry Nalebuff explains the Split the Pie method, a principled approach to negotiation that focuses on creating value and dividing it equally. Discover how to avoid arbitrary bargaining and use data, logic, and game theory to reach fair outcomes.