"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:

00:00 Why Serial Innovators Matter

00:31 Sponsor and Series Setup

01:11 Meet Bruce Vojak

02:45 Defining Innovation

04:08 Carrot Peeler Breakthroughs

05:54 Market Expansion Examples

07:56 What Is a Serial Innovator

08:44 Hiring and Spotting Innovators

10:32 Curse of Early Success

15:19 Punished for Innovating

17:34 Tom Osborne at P&G

19:53 Digging Deep for Insight

22:18 Bootlegging to Launch Ultra

27:25 When Innovators Check Out

33:17 Incremental vs Breakthrough

36:04 S Curves and Culture Tension

42:03 Stage Gate vs Iteration

43:24 Switch to Video and Diagrams

44:30 Stage Gate Overview

45:09 Stage Gate Basics

46:58 Innovation Roles Explained

48:21 Serial Innovators Across Roles

50:34 Customer Driven Discovery Loop

53:37 Seeing Patterns Metaphors

55:13 Motivation And Role Friction

01:02:50 MP5 Model Origins

01:04:33 Traits Motivation Politics

01:16:07 Innovation Process Diagram 1.7

01:21:57 Wrap Up Sponsor Outro

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

https://amzn.to/4f7Y85q

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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Bruce Vojak — Serial Innovators: The Hidden Power Inside Mature Firms (Part 1)

The Innovation Show

Bruce Vojak — Serial Innovators: The Hidden Power Inside Mature Firms (Part 1)