About

Breakthrough Innovation Advisors, LLC has been thoughtfully established to address the real, often underlying issues that hold companies back when it comes to renewal in general and innovation in particular.

Bruce Vojak and any colleagues he might bring with him into an engagement are 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 this practical approach, clear leadership style, and deep understanding of how innovation actually happens inside real organizations.

Bruce and his colleagues bring the acknowledged authority of insight creators, not merely curators, to help leadership teams align, commit, and successfully move forward with impact.

Mission

Enable mature companies to survive and thrive in a volatile, complex, and increasingly ambiguous world.

Unique position: A “people” view of innovation

For decades, both business practice and research on innovation have taken the perspective that innovation can be managed like any other (albeit complex) process of the firm. While a highly structured and closely supervised approach is helpful in creating Incremental Innovation, our experience, supported by a decade‐long study of numerous companies across many industries, reveals that it is not conducive to creating Breakthrough Innovation. In fact, the drive to routinize has gone too far, so far as to limit many companies’ ability to innovate. In today’s economy, with the future of so many mature firms at stake, this insight brings a clarion call to rethink how to nurture and thrive on an innovative workforce.

In sharp contrast to prevailing perspectives, we re-frame the problem by taking a “people” view of innovation.

This approach zeros in on the cutting‐edge individuals who repeatedly create and deliver Breakthrough Innovations in mature organizations. Unlike Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, or Elon Musk, these “Serial Innovators” are embedded within the organization and unknown to the public. Yet, they are organizational powerhouses who solve customer problems and substantially—and disproportionately—contribute to their company’s financial value.

Founding principle: Practical application

Bruce has walked in your shoes.

The insight he brings to clients is built on years of practical application as a hands-on bench engineer, an innovator, and an 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.

And already from the very outset of his technical career, Bruce was part of a team under the direction of Professor Nick Holonyak, Jr. that demonstrated the first quantum-well laser, an impactful technical development of the late twentieth century, which enabled advances such as fiber-optic communications, compact disc players, and new techniques in medical diagnosis and surgery. To put this in perspective, the global market for semiconductor lasers is estimated to be in the $5-10 B range, with quantum wells utilized in the vast majority of modern laser diodes.

Bruce has contributed to real innovation and recognizes what it looks like.

Founding principle: Thought leadership

Bruce has advanced our understanding of what successful innovation truly means and looks like.

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.

And this isn’t everything. In all, Bruce has authored five invited book chapters, 70 peer-reviewed journal publications, and 48 conference presentations—spanning both his technical and business careers. He has contributed significantly to both the technical and innovation literatures.

As a result of his deep, actionable insight, Bruce is regularly called upon as a keynote, conference, and podcast speaker.

About Bruce

A leading authority on innovation in general and breakthrough innovation in particular, Bruce Vojak founded Breakthrough Innovation Advisors, LLC to help companies survive and thrive in a volatile, complex, and increasingly ambiguous world. Bruce brings a unique and powerful combination of deep and broad expertise—and a rich network of other experts—to guide clients in harnessing its benefits.

Spanning a career at the intersection of business and technology, Bruce has experienced and explored innovation purposefully and variously.

Having first established himself as a successful technical contributor and technology executive in industry, he understands first-hand the business need for and benefits of innovation. Having later transitioned to academia, he followed his passion by conducting groundbreaking research on innovation practice across a wide cross-section of mature companies in mature industries.

Bruce is the co-author of two highly regarded books on innovation, both published by Stanford University Press, as well as five invited book chapters and numerous peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations. A Senior Fellow of The Conference Board, Bruce has served on the Advisory Board of JVA Partners, the Advisory Board of Midtronics, Inc., and the Board of Directors of Micron Industries Corporation. In addition, he consults on the topic of innovation, presenting to, leading workshops for, and advising various other companies.

Before founding Breakthrough Innovation Advisors, Bruce served as Associate Dean and Adjunct Professor in the top-ranked Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign. Earlier, he was Director of Advanced Technology for Motorola’s non-semiconductor components business; held research, corporate development, and business development positions of increasing responsibility at Amoco Corporation; and was on the research staff at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. He holds BS, MS, and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MBA from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.