Look beyond operational excellence to your next growth engine
Breakthrough Innovation Advisors, LLC helps established companies survive and thrive
If your organization has strong fundamentals but new growth feels slow or uncertain, we work with leadership teams to break through growth plateaus.
We guide you in clarifying priorities, aligning decision-makers, implementing effective processes, and—most importantly—engaging successful innovators who make things happen.
We help you move, from ideas to action to success.
Who we work with
We partner with owners, boards, executive teams, and functional organizations at mature organizations who:
- Have successful core businesses but stalled growth.
- Recognize that innovation matters but struggle to operationalize it.
- Face external threats, such as market shifts, new competitors, or changing customer expectations.
- Want practical guidance, based on a unique combination of proven industry experience and academic research.
Our clients value clarity, experience, and measurable outcomes grounded in deep yet practical insight.
What we help you achieve
Our actionable insight creates tangible business impact.
Clients engage us to affect and sustain their commitment to innovation-driven renewal:
- Evaluate innovation capabilities and overcome gaps.
- Identify, develop, and effectively manage exemplary innovators.
- Break internal gridlock and create organizational alignment.
- Challenge established approaches and thinking.
- Establish a strategic path forward.
- Establish and simplify company-appropriate processes.
This is strategic innovation that leads directly to business performance.
Our approach
All successful innovation investments are alike; each unsuccessful one fails in its own way.
Successful innovation efforts require actionable insight characterized by deep conceptual understanding coupled with practical business acumen.
Built on a unique combined foundation of decades of industry experience and groundbreaking academic research, we don’t merely tell you what to do; we help you and your team understand why, enabling you to succeed beyond our engagement.
Our process blends strategy with hands-on facilitation to help leadership teams move from ambiguity to action, concentrating on three areas critical to innovation success:
- Alignment: Helping organizations align both strategically and tactically around whether to invest, which opportunities to pursue, and how key decisions get made.
- Simple Processes: Implementing a small number of tailored, stepwise processes that support disciplined experimentation, reduce risk, and bring clarity to executive decision making.
- Serial Innovators: Developing or engaging exemplary individuals who recognize emerging opportunities, connect disparate insights, and guide organizations in placing informed bets.
We work directly with you and your team to ensure ownership, alignment, and follow-through.
Real progress inside your organization.
Why Breakthrough Innovation Advisors
You are not hiring consultants who learned innovation in the classroom or from slide decks.
You are working with practitioners who understand the realities of business and organizational dynamics, from the trenches and the boardroom.
We bring:
- Deep experience inside mature company environments.
- Proven innovation frameworks built upon ground-breaking academic research and real-world application.
- A facilitative leadership style that builds independence, not dependency.
- A bias toward action and measurable outcomes.
Our goal is simple: help your organization succeed, now and over time.
About Bruce Vojak
Bruce and the colleagues he involves on a case-by-case basis bring decades of Practical application grounded in deep and broad Thought leadership, helping mature organizations survive and thrive, navigating complexity, disruption, and growth.
Building on a career spanning roles as an innovator, innovation executive, innovation researcher, innovation advisor, and board member, Bruce has worked directly with executive teams across diverse industries, guiding companies through strategic renewal, innovation initiatives, and organizational change. His work lives at the intersection of strategy, execution, and the people who make things happen.
► Founding principle: Practical application
Bruce has been there. The insight he brings to clients is built on years of practical application as an innovator and innovation executive in industry. Not merely academic, but actionable insight tested in the marketplace. Further, his experience as an innovation advisor and board member spans a broad range of mature companies and industries. From small- and medium-sized companies to the largest corporate entities, he has proven himself a contributor who understands what it takes for organizations to both survive and thrive.
► Founding principle: Thought leadership
Bruce’s more than decade-long academic research study of Serial Innovators led to a new and critically important understanding of the role of innovation exemplars in mature companies of all sizes, resulting in the publication of the highly-regarded book Serial Innovators: How Individuals Create and Deliver Breakthrough Innovations in Mature Firms (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012), co-authored with Abbie Griffin and Ray Price.
His similarly extensive exploration of innovation in small- and medium-sized mature enterprises led to a clear understanding of how innovation succeeds in such organizations and resulted in the publication of the similarly well-received No-Excuses Innovation: Strategies for Small- and Medium-Sized Mature Enterprises (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2022), co-authored with Walter Herbst.
► Bringing it all together
Bruce is known for cutting through ambiguity, surfacing what truly matters, and facilitating productive—and at times, difficult—conversations that lead to decisions and action. Clients value his practical approach, clear leadership style, and deep understanding of how innovation actually happens inside real organizations.
He brings the acknowledged authority of an insight creator, not merely a curator, to help leadership teams align, commit, and successfully move forward.
Let’s Talk
If you are ready to explore how innovation can become a true growth driver for your organization, let’s start with a confidential, no-commitment, exploratory conversation.
Or contact us directly at bvojak@breakthrough-innovation-advisors.com with questions.