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The Innovation Show

The Innovation Show

The Innovation Show 749 Episodes Jul 3, 2026

A global weekly show that interviews authors to inspire, educate, and inform the business world and the curious. Presented by the author of "Undisruptable", it explores topics beyond innovation, disruption, and technology, focusing on the human need to learn and adapt to a changing world.

Episodes

Carliss Baldwin & Kim Clark — Design Rules: How IBM Created Ecosystems (and Competitors) Jul 3, 2026 01:29:04 "The act of modularizing your product is the very act of inviting your future competitors into existence." Carliss Baldwin and Kim Clark, authors of the landmark Design Rules: The Power of Modularity, join Aidan McCullen for an Innovation Show exclusive. Their book is the Rosetta Stone of platform strategy — the mechanic underneath the Innovator's Dilemma — and it has never been more relevant th
Jennifer Chatman — Transformational Leader or Narcissist? Jun 24, 2026 33:38 "Narcissists do draw people in. They start with really appealing visions — and then the wheels come off." About 2% of people are narcissists. Among CEOs, it's roughly 16%. Jennifer Chatman — Dean of the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and one of the world's leading scholars of organisational culture — joins Aidan McCullen to explain why narcissistic leadership is so often mistaken for vis
Geoffrey Cain — Steve Jobs in Exile, Part 2: NeXT's Failures, Pixar's Lifeline and the Road Back to Apple Jun 15, 2026 56:33 Steve Jobs sold barely 100 computers a month at NeXT — and told his team they'd sell 100,000. This is the decade everyone skips. Author Geoffrey Cain joins Aidan McCullen for part two on Steve Jobs in Exile, the story of the wilderness years between Jobs' 1985 ousting from Apple and his return. Cain reframes the NeXT era not as a triumphant hero's journey but as a cascade of failure, ego and sel
Geoffrey Cain — Steve Jobs in Exile: NeXT, Failure, Revenge and the Remaking of a Visionary Jun 10, 2026 01:19:17 Steve Jobs was nearly bankrupt — down to his last $150 million, burning $50 million a year, with every product failing and every investor gone. Award-winning journalist Geoffrey Cain, author of Steve Jobs in Exile: The Untold Story of NeXT and the Remaking of a Technology Visionary, joins Aidan McCullen to tell the story the official Jobs narrative leaves out: the dozen years between his firing
AI Is Rewiring Organizations — McGrath, Osterwalder, Amla & Sheikh Jun 3, 2026 55:59 One developer. Six months. An $80 million sale to Wix. That's not the future of work — it's already here. In this special panel from the Kyndryl Institute and The Innovation Show, host Aidan McCullen brings together four of the world's sharpest minds on strategy, innovation and disruption to explain why most leaders are using AI completely wrong — and what to do instead. Rita McGrath (Columbia,
Eric Ries — How to Build an Incorruptible Organisation May 27, 2026 34:45 What if the best practices taught in every business school are quietly destroying the organisations that follow them? Eric Ries — author of Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad and How Great Companies Stay Great and founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange — joins Aidan McCullen to expose the hidden forces that corrupt mission-driven organisations, and to reveal the structural defences that ke
Bruce Vojak — Identifying, Developing and Managing Serial Innovators (Part 3 of 3) May 20, 2026 01:12:40 "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: staff meetings, budget reviews, formal reporting. Dennis's job was to keep him in real work. Most managers do the opposite. In part
Bruce Vojak — Navigating the Politics of Breakthrough Innovation (Part 2 of 3) May 14, 2026 56:18 "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 saw patterns no-one else did. 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
Bruce Vojak — The Hourglass Model of Breakthrough Innovation May 13, 2026 13:27 Most companies think innovation is a straight line. Bruce Vojak spent years studying the people who prove otherwise. Bruce Vojak is co-author of Serial Innovators: How Individuals Create and Deliver Breakthrough Innovations in Mature Firms (Oxford University Press). In this bonus episode of The Innovation Show, he joins Aidan McCullen for a focused look at the Hourglass Innovation Model — the de
Bruce Vojak — Serial Innovators: The Hidden Power Inside Mature Firms (Part 1) May 7, 2026 01:24:42 "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 inside a large firm — quietly create the breakthrough products that fund everything else. They have no formal mandate. They are often almost fired. An
Jeff & Staney DeGraff — The Art of Change (DeGraff Trilogy Finale) Apr 27, 2026 01:22:51 "Organisations love innovation, but they hate their innovators." Jeff and Staney DeGraff return to The Innovation Show to close out Aidan McCullen's DeGraff trilogy with their book The Art of Change. Their argument is direct: change rarely fails because of bad strategy or weak execution. It fails because leaders bring the wrong mindset — treating change like a linear project when change is actua
Creativity Is a Skill: Jeff & Staney DeGraff on the C.R.E.A.T.E. Method (Clarify to Evaluate) Apr 22, 2026 51:13 Description: Creativity isn't reserved for geniuses—it's a skill you can learn, practice, and compound over time. In this episode of The Innovation Show, Aidan McCullen sits down with Jeff and Staney DeGraff to explore their practical framework for everyday creativity: the C.R.E.A.T.E. method. Based on decades of research and real-world application, they break down how innovation actually happens—

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