“These are the most important people you’ve never heard of.”
After interviewing more than 50 serial innovators inside the world’s largest mature companies, Bruce Vojak knows something most boards don’t: a tiny minority of people — roughly 1 in 500 inside a large firm — quietly create the breakthrough products that fund everything else. They have no formal mandate. They are often almost fired. And without them, the S-curve flatlines.
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 a former engineering executive who has spent over a decade studying how breakthrough innovation actually happens inside big organisations. This is part one of a multi-part series with host Aidan McCullen on Bruce’s life’s work.
In this conversation, Bruce reveals:
- Why the humble carrot peeler is the clearest example of how innovation redefines the basis of competition
- How Tom Osborne at Procter & Gamble almost lost his job twice — before launching the billion-dollar Always Ultra brand
- The Tom Osborne quote every product team should hang on the wall: his products were “love letters to his customers”
- Why it is not marketing, it is “customering” — and why customer-driven beats market-driven every time
- The three roles inside the stage-gate process — inventor, champion, implementer — and why serial innovators play across all three
- Why stage-gate is brilliant for incremental innovation and lethal for breakthrough work
- The MP5 model: motivation, personality, perspectives, preparation, process and politics — what serial innovators bring vs. what they develop
- Why the politics is the work — and why pushing the boulder up the hill is Sisyphean by design
- The hiring insight that changes everything: “I want people who want to do the work innovators do, not people who want to be an innovator”
- How Iain McGilchrist’s master and emissary, Charles Handy’s S-curves and Thomas Kuhn’s paradigms all converge inside one good innovator
- Why early success is a curse — and what to do when your organisation has forgotten how it found its first product
Chapters:
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
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bvojak/
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. With a unique blend of AI-powered consulting built on unmatched managed-service capability, Kyndryl helps leaders harness technology 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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