The Innovation Show
May 7, 2026
Host: Aidan McCullen
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. Kyndryl helps leaders harness AI-powered consulting and managed-service capability for smarter decisions, faster innovation and lasting competitive edge. Learn more about Kyndryl and the Kyndryl Institute at https://www.kyndryl.com.
Serial Innovators—The Hidden Power Inside Big Firms
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 — quietly create the breakthrough products that fund everything else. They have no formal mandate. They're often almost fired. And without them, the S-curve flatlines. Bruce is the 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 Aidan McCullen on his life's work.
The Hourglass Model of Innovation
Most companies think innovation is a straight line. Bruce Vojak spent years studying the people who actually break through — and what he found looks nothing like a Stage-Gate process. Bruce Vojak, co-author of Serial Innovators, joins Aidan McCullen for a focused bonus episode on the Hourglass Innovation Model — the descriptive framework that maps how serial innovators actually move from motivation to flawless launch, and why that path is nonlinear, iterative, and often invisible to the organisations around them. In this conversation,
The Politics of Breakthrough Innovation
"I see dead people!" That was Nancy Dawes' answer when Bruce Vojak asked her how she did it. The chemical engineer who took Olay from a dying brand to a billion-dollar product line wasn't being mysterious — she was telling him she could see things her colleagues couldn't. And the real burden, she realised, wasn't seeing them. It was getting an entire organisation to see them too. In part two of our Serial Innovators series, Bruce Vojak returns to unpack the chapter most innovators learn the hard way: the politics. Over 90% of a mature company's resources, people and management attention are locked onto today's products. Breakthrough innovation has to fight all of it — for capital, for headcount, for strategic oxygen — and that fight is political by design. 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.
Find, Develop & Manage Serial Innovators
"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 of staff meetings, budgets and reports. Dennis's job was to keep him in real work. Most managers do the opposite. In the final part of our Serial Innovators series, Bruce Vojak closes the loop on how organisations find these rare people, develop them, and manage them without 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.
