Behind The Scenes: Outthinkers Podcast #118
Bruce Vojak: Decoding the Minds of Serial Innovators
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.
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