#118—Bruce Vojak: Decoding the Minds of Serial Innovators

Outthinkers

Bruce Vojak, is Managing Director of Breakthrough Innovation Advisors, LLC, and serves on the Advisory Board of Midtronics, Inc., JVA Partners, and the Board of Directors of Micron Industries Corporation, and is a Senior Fellow with The Conference Board. Further, he has co-authored five book chapters—in addition to numerous peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations—on innovation. He is the author of No-Excuses Innovation: Strategies for Small- and Medium-Sized Mature Enterprises (published 2022) and Serial Innovators: How Individuals Create and Deliver Breakthrough Innovations in Mature Firms from 2012.

Bruce was formerly the Dean and an Adjunct Professor in the top-ranked Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign. Earlier in his career, he was Director of Advanced Technology for Motorola’s non-semiconductor components business and was on the research staff at MIT Lincoln Laboratory.

Bruce brings together real research with real-world practice, while taking a more human-view of innovation. Spanning a career at the intersection of business and technology, Bruce has experienced and explored innovation purposefully and variously.
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In this episode, Bruce shares:

• The definition of innovation, how it relates to strategy
• How successful innovators view organization politics and why this is important
• The key characteristics of innovators seen from years of research, and what sets them apart from the rest
• How innovators often see patterns others miss, and feel it is their "call of duty" to help an organization see and follow through on these ideas
• What it takes to be a good manager of innovators—and how they can hold on to these innovators when not equipped to manage these unique individuals

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Episode Timeline:
00:00—Highlight from today's episode
1:04—Introducing Bruce + the topic of today’s episode
2:57—If you really know me, you know that...
4:06—What's your definition of strategy?
7:13—What's your definition of innovation?
9:00— What sets serial innovators apart from others
14:12—What is a serial innovator, and the specific characteristics?
18:01— Managing serial innovators effectively
19:35— Politics as part of the innovation process
21:02— How serial innovators manage politics within an organization
22:30— Motivation for his "No Excuses-Innovation" book
24:40— Book recommendation for strategists
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Additional Resources:
Personal site: https://www.breakthrough-innovation-advisors.com/bruce-vojak/
Link to book: No-Excuses Innovation: Strategies for Small- and Medium-Sized Mature Enterprises
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bvojak/
Thank you to our guest. Thank you to our executive producer, Karina Reyes, our editor, Zach Ness, and the rest of the team. If you like

Thank you to our guest. Thank you to our executive producer, Karina Reyes, our editor, Zach Ness, and the rest of the team. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. I'm your host, Kaihan Krippendorff. Thank you for listening.
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