Bruce Vojak — Identifying, Developing and Managing Serial Innovators (Part 3 of 3)
Release Date: 05/20/2026
Alex Osterwalder — Which Projects to Fund and Which to Kill
The Innovation Show
"Spreadsheets are a fantasy made explicit. They're not a metric. What you can measure is the evidence that the business case could work." Alexander Osterwalder, creator of the Business Model Canvas, CEO of Strategyzer and author of The Invincible Company, Testing Business Ideas and Value Proposition Design, returns to The Innovation Show. He walks Aidan McCullen through the evidence-based innovation playbook he uses with companies like Honeywell to decide which growth projects to fund, which to change, and which to retire — so you get a real funnel, not a tunnel. In this conversation, Alex...
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Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez — Powered by Projects and the Project-Driven Organization
The Innovation Show
"If you launch more projects than you finish, you're a bad leader. Your role is not about launching projects — it's about finishing them." Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, creator of the project economy concept and author of Powered by Projects, joins Aidan McCullen to explain why agile — a 20-year-old idea — is no longer enough, and why the next evolution is the project-driven organization (PDO): a company rearchitected around dynamic, empowered, cross-functional project teams. In this conversation, Antonio reveals: Why EY's Project Everest collapsed despite a perfect plan — and what it says...
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Rita McGrath & Sangeet Paul Choudary — Rule Makers, Rule Takers and Structural Uncertainty
The Innovation Show
"Structural uncertainty is simple. The game itself is in question. The playing field is in question. You're no longer playing with uncertainty inside the rules — the rules are the thing that's moving." Rita McGrath wrote The End of Competitive Advantage and gave us transient advantage. Sangeet Paul Choudary wrote Reshuffle and won the 2025 Thinkers50 Strategy Award. Aidan McCullen puts them in the same room to ask a question neither can answer alone: in an age of AI, is advantage getting shorter, or are a small number of firms locking in something far more durable by making the rules...
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Keith McCandless — The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures
The Innovation Show
"You don't have to be a methodological genius. These are patterns — 43 simple patterns that anyone can use to include every voice in shaping what happens next." Keith McCandless, co-developer of Liberating Structures and co-author of The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures, joins Aidan McCullen to explain why most meetings are either over-controlled or under-controlled — and how simple shifts in everyday interaction can unleash a culture of innovation from the frontline to the C-suite. In this conversation, Keith reveals: Why the first field test of Liberating Structures happened in...
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Usman Sheikh — How AI Will Reshape Consulting: The End of the Pyramid
The Innovation Show
"AI doesn't have judgment in it — it produces judgment-shaped artifacts." Usman Sheikh, founder of High Output Ventures and author of the Framebreak newsletter, has spent years writing about how AI will reshape professional services — and the world has now caught up with the puck. In this conversation with Aidan McCullen, he explains why the consulting pyramid — the structure behind every major firm — is coming apart, and what replaces it. In this conversation, Usman reveals: Why firms became pyramids: leverage, margin, and a talent academy paid for by the client's billable hours How...
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Carla Johnson — RE:Think Innovation and the Wheel of Innovation
The Innovation Show
"Innovation isn't a gift. It's a simple, repeatable five-step process that anyone, at any level, can learn — with nothing more than a stack of Post-it notes." Carla Johnson, author of RE:Think Innovation, is on a mission to teach one million people to consistently come up with new, great and reliable ideas. In this anniversary-edition conversation, she takes Aidan McCullen through her updated Wheel of Innovation — observe, distill, relate, generate, pitch — and the cautionary tales that show why so many good ideas die in the boardroom. In this conversation, Carla reveals: Why a...
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Carliss Baldwin & Kim Clark — Design Rules: How IBM Created Ecosystems (and Competitors)
The Innovation Show
"The act of modularizing your product is the very act of inviting your future competitors into existence." Carliss Baldwin and Kim Clark, authors of the landmark Design Rules: The Power of Modularity, join Aidan McCullen for an Innovation Show exclusive. Their book is the Rosetta Stone of platform strategy — the mechanic underneath the Innovator's Dilemma — and it has never been more relevant than in this age of AI. In this conversation, Carliss and Kim reveal: Why the power of modularity underpins Moore's Law — and everything digital around us How IBM engineers, locked in a...
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Jennifer Chatman — Transformational Leader or Narcissist?
The Innovation Show
"Narcissists do draw people in. They start with really appealing visions — and then the wheels come off." About 2% of people are narcissists. Among CEOs, it's roughly 16%. Jennifer Chatman — Dean of the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and one of the world's leading scholars of organisational culture — joins Aidan McCullen to explain why narcissistic leadership is so often mistaken for visionary leadership, and how to tell the two apart before one wrecks your company. Drawing on her widely cited article with Stanford's Charles O'Reilly, "Transformational Leader or Narcissist?",...
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Geoffrey Cain — Steve Jobs in Exile, Part 2: NeXT's Failures, Pixar's Lifeline and the Road Back to Apple
The Innovation Show
Steve Jobs sold barely 100 computers a month at NeXT — and told his team they'd sell 100,000. This is the decade everyone skips. Author Geoffrey Cain joins Aidan McCullen for part two on Steve Jobs in Exile, the story of the wilderness years between Jobs' 1985 ousting from Apple and his return. Cain reframes the NeXT era not as a triumphant hero's journey but as a cascade of failure, ego and self-sabotage that quietly forged the leader Jobs became. In this conversation, Geoffrey reveals: Why the "reality distortion field" stopped working the moment the $6,500 NeXTcube shipped How Jobs...
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Geoffrey Cain — Steve Jobs in Exile: NeXT, Failure, Revenge and the Remaking of a Visionary
The Innovation Show
Steve Jobs was nearly bankrupt — down to his last $150 million, burning $50 million a year, with every product failing and every investor gone. Award-winning journalist Geoffrey Cain, author of Steve Jobs in Exile: The Untold Story of NeXT and the Remaking of a Technology Visionary, joins Aidan McCullen to tell the story the official Jobs narrative leaves out: the dozen years between his firing from Apple in 1985 and his triumphant return. Drawing on unbroadcast NeXT footage, new interviews and internal documents, Cain reveals the failures, the revenge and the near-misses that forged the...
info_outline"I don't like J work."
That was Andy — a top serial innovator at SAIC — telling his manager Dennis what he needed to be protected from. J work, in Andy's field of computational electromagnetics, is the imaginary part of a number. To Andy, it meant the imaginary work: staff meetings, budget reviews, formal reporting. Dennis's job was to keep him in real work. Most managers do the opposite.
In part three of our Serial Innovators series, Bruce Vojak closes the loop. After two episodes on who serial innovators are and how they navigate the politics, this one is about how organisations find them, develop them — and how managers can stop accidentally driving them out the door.
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:
• Why mechanistic, CV-screening HR processes — and now AI-powered hiring filters — systematically screen out your future innovators
• The four engagement filters that actually identify a serial innovator: how they engage with problems, projects, business, and people
• The five core traits — systems thinking, above-average (but not extreme) creativity, innate curiosity, deep-expertise intuition, and the intrinsic drive to make things better
• Why π-shaped (pi-shaped) workers — broad across domains AND deep in multiple specialisms — beat T-shaped specialists
• Why innovators spot innovators — and why your best HR move is letting your existing serial innovators sit in on hires
• The career-phase development model: hard problems early, breadth via exposure, apprenticeship over mentorship, and burnout as a real risk if you don't choose your battles
• Golden handcuffs — and the "fur-lined mousetrap" most serial innovators eventually walk into
• The Dennis-and-Andy story at DEMACO/SAIC — and what Dennis did right that almost every other manager gets wrong
• The pheasant hunting in Iowa metaphor — why over-managed budgets leave no nesting ground for the future of your business
• The five things a manager has to do — air cover, patience, running interference, no bureaucratic J work, no daily progress reports
• Why phase-gate control is the slow death of breakthrough innovation
• Where Bruce respectfully diverges from Clay Christensen on whether innovation can survive inside the organisation — or has to be spun out
• The incentive traps that quietly destroy serial innovators — and why "I'm doing what's best for the company and you're giving me crap for it" is the line every serial innovator says to themselves at least once
Chapters:
00:00 Executive Innovator Balance
00:37 Sponsor Message
01:03 Serial Innovators Intro
01:08 HR Screening Problem
03:02 Four Engagement Filters
04:46 Engaging With Problems
05:28 Projects Tenacity
06:29 Business Mindset
07:16 People And Customers
08:33 Research Method War Room
10:46 Five Core Traits
12:12 Innovators Spot Innovators
14:05 Career Phases 0 To 10
17:06 Hard Problems Early
17:58 Apprenticeship Model
18:52 Burnout And Choosing Battles
22:33 Innovator Versus Inventor
24:24 Nurturing Through Exposure
27:05 Budget Barriers Story
29:59 AI Hiring And Hidden Signals
31:44 HR Triads And Policy Limits
33:04 Golden Handcuffs Risk
34:34 Managing For Impact Setup
35:52 Relational Management Style
37:41 Innovation As Dance
38:09 Incentives And Motivation
40:51 Demco SAIC Case Study
44:08 Pheasant Metaphor Budgets
47:12 Avoiding J Work
49:55 Manager Air Cover Tips
52:03 Phase Gates And Control
55:53 Ego And Incentive Traps
59:54 Christensen Inside Vs Spinout
01:03:58 Pi Shaped Innovators
01:08:16 No Excuses Innovation Preview
01:11:33 Wrap Up And Where To Find
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 — 2025 Thinkers50 Innovation Award recipient, keynote speaker, author of Undisruptable — 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.
About the host
Aidan McCullen is the 2025 Thinkers50 Innovation Award recipient, host of The Innovation Show, and author of Undisruptable (Wiley). Learn more or enquire about booking him for a keynote: https://theinnovationshow.io/about-aidan-mccullen/
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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