The Innovation Show

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 from Apple in 1985 and his triumphant return. Drawing on unbroadcast NeXT footage, new interviews and internal documents, Cain reveals the failures, the revenge and the near-misses that forged the leader who saved Apple.
In this conversation, Geoffrey reveals:
Why Steve Jobs was three years from bankruptcy in the early 1990s
The "low-level employees" lie that made Apple sue its own co-founder
Why the lawsuit backfired and handed Jobs exactly what he wanted
How a Bill Gates talk about CD-ROMs accidentally named NeXT
Why revenge on John Sculley — not changing the world — drove the founding of NeXT
The "hero–shithead rollercoaster" every NeXT executive insisted Cain had to understand
The "deep shit list" Jobs ran the company on — and the mindset shift that replaced it
How George Lucas's divorce handed Jobs Pixar at a fire-sale price
Why Ross Perot bet $20 million on a company with no product
"Steve on a Stick" — the celebrity sales act that kept NeXT alive
Chapters: 
00:00 Failures Before Fame
01:03 Sponsor Message
01:36 NeXT Years Overview
02:50 Meet Geoffrey Cain
06:46 Survivorship Bias Lens
08:59 Near Bankruptcy Stakes
11:50 Fired From Apple 1985
14:37 Summer In Exile
19:11 Rival Jean-Louis Gassée
22:22 Dan'l Lewin And Education
27:32 Revenge Fuels NeXT
30:52 Apple Sues Steve Jobs
34:37 Lawsuit Backfires
36:23 Naming NeXT
39:02 Betting Careers On Steve
42:08 Pixar Fire Sale Bet
45:28 Working With Steve
46:31 Hero Shithead Rollercoaster
49:11 NeXT Talent Hierarchy
53:14 Luxury Spending Spree
58:32 Ross Perot Big Check
01:02:04 Deep Shit List Management
01:08:28 Canon Optical Disk Gamble
01:13:38 Businessland Sales Fallout
01:17:22 Wrap Up And Sponsor
Find Geoffrey Cain at https://geoffreycain.net, on X at @Geoffrey_Cain and on LinkedIn (GCain).
This series is brought to you by Kyndryl, who run and reimagine the technology systems that drive advantage for the world's leading businesses. Learn more about Kyndryl and the Kyndryl Institute at https://www.kyndryl.com.
Subscribe to the Thursday Thought on Substack for a chance to win a copy of Steve Jobs in Exile, with thanks to Kyndryl: https://thethursdaythought.substack.com
About The Innovation Show: The Thinkers50-recognised podcast where square pegs find their place in a world of round holes. Aidan McCullen hosts world-class authors, scientists and practitioners on disruption, innovation, change, transformation, leadership, AI and the ideas shaping tomorrow.
About the Host: Aidan McCullen is the 2025 Thinkers50 Innovation Award recipient, keynote speaker on AI, disruption, innovation, and change, host of The Innovation Show, and author of Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention (Wiley). Learn more at https://theinnovationshow.io/about-aidan-mccullen 
Website: https://theinnovationshow.io
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-innovation-show/id1148455669
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/63nFKf4bsSWo3W72gWtOsK?si=b62d9614237c4450
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/theinnovationshow
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aidanmccullen

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, author of The Entrepreneurial Mindset and originator of "transient advantage"), Alexander Osterwalder (creator of the Business Model Canvas, CEO of Strategyzer), Ismail Amla (SVP at Kyndryl, author of From Incremental to Exponential) and Usman Sheikh (author of Frame Break, MD of High Output Ventures) map how work, value and power are being redrawn.
In this conversation, the panel reveals:
Why painting over a rusty gate explains how most companies are misusing AI
How a single developer sold an $80 million company to Wix after six months of solo work
What Jensen Huang does every Sunday night to stay connected to NVIDIA's front line
Why Bayer put its whole workforce on 90-day cycles — and how it kills office politics
The "verification bottleneck" that quietly cancels out every speed gain from AI
Why one firm tracking staff AI logins for promotions missed the point entirely
How the billable hour is dying — and what replaces it
Why labour arbitrage flipped from advantage to liability in just twelve months
What a Korean fintech founded by a dentist (Toss) teaches us about permissionless teams
Where incumbents still hold a moat that AI-native startups can't touch
Chapters: 00:00 AI Moment Opens
00:35 Meet The Panel
02:20 Rewiring Organisations 
03:36 Rusty Gate Lesson
04:25 Entrepreneurial CEO Return 
06:28 Permissionless Transition
08:39 One-Person Unicorns
10:13 Power Redefined
13:17 Verification Bottleneck 
15:46 Agents In The Enterprise 
20:22 Gaming AI Metrics
22:54 Death Of The Billable Hour 
24:23 Electricity Era Analogy
26:18 Business Model Fundamentals 
28:04 Rethinking Business Models
29:04 AI Native vs Legacy
29:49 Services Industry Upended
33:40 First Steps For Incumbents
37:51 Toss And Team Autonomy
41:17 Incentives And Accountability
45:42 Incumbent Data Moats
47:50 Elevator Pitches And Wrap-Up
The panel: Rita McGrath — https://www.ritamcgrath.com
Alexander Osterwalder / Strategyzer — https://www.strategyzer.com
Ismail Amla, From Incremental to Exponential — https://www.kyndryl.com
Usman Sheikh, Frame Break — https://highoutputventures.com
This series is brought to you by Kyndryl, who run and reimagine the technology systems that drive advantage for the world's leading businesses. With a unique blend of AI-powered consulting built on unmatched managed-service capability, Kyndryl helps leaders harness technology for smarter decisions, faster innovation, and lasting competitive edge. Learn more about Kyndryl and the Kyndryl Institute at https://www.kyndryl.com.
Subscribe to the Thursday Thought on Substack : https://thethursdaythought.substack.com
About The Innovation Show: The Thinkers50-recognised podcast where square pegs find their place in a world of round holes. Each week, Aidan McCullen sits down with world-class authors, scientists and practitioners to explore disruption, innovation, change, leadership, AI and the ideas shaping tomorrow.
About the host: Aidan McCullen — 2025 Thinkers50 Innovation Award recipient, keynote speaker on AI, disruption, innovation and change, host of The Innovation Show, and author of Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention (Wiley). https://theinnovationshow.io/about-aidan-mccullen 
Follow and subscribe:
Website: https://theinnovationshow.io
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-innovation-show/id1148455669
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/63nFKf4bsSWo3W72gWtOsK
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/theinnovationshow
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aidanmccullen

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 keep outliers like Costco immune.
About Eric Ries Eric Ries is an entrepreneur and the bestselling author of The Lean Startup. His new book, Incorruptible, maps the structural forces that destroy company missions and lays out a blueprint for building organisations that resist them. He is also the founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange (LTSE).
About Aidan McCullen Aidan McCullen is a Thinkers50-recognised host, keynote speaker, author of Undisruptable, and former professional athlete. He is the founder and host of The Innovation Show — the podcast where square pegs find their place in a world of round holes.
In this conversation, Eric reveals:
Why mission drift and bureaucracy are really corruption — and why naming them that changes everything
How financial gravity silently pulls every organisation toward value extraction unless actively resisted
The professor story that launched the book — and the question that haunts every founder: is it even possible to build an incorruptible organisation?
The LTSE ambush: how Eric's team chose potential bankruptcy over compromising their principles — and why that decision ultimately saved the company
Why the founder hero story and the market story are the same story told backwards — and how that confusion destroys organisations from the inside
The golden goose paradox: why Sol Price and Robert Owen kept losing control of the very organisations they built
The Costco governance fortress — how Jim Sinegal created a structure that protects the fiduciary-to-the-customer ethos no matter how hard Wall Street pushes back
00:00 Sponsor Message
00:26 Naming Corruption
02:32 Why Best Practices Fail
05:08 Professor Story Wake Up Call
09:57 Financial Gravity And Strength
12:26 LTSE Ambush And Principles
19:14 Founder Hero Vs Market Story
23:56 Golden Goose And Case Studies
25:19 Sol Price And Robert Owen
30:46 Costco Governance Fortress
33:15 Wrap Up And Resources
34:26 Sponsor Outro
Guest links:
Book: https://amzn.to/4e89kOx
More resources: https://www.incorruptible.co/resources/more-failures
Subscribe to the Thursday Thought on Substack for a chance to win a copy of Incorruptible, with thanks to Kyndryl: https://thethursdaythought.substack.com
Subscribe and follow: https://theinnovationshow.io
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-innovation-show/id1148455669
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/63nFKf4bsSWo3W72gWtOsK?si=b62d9614237c4450
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/theinnovationshow
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aidanmccullen

"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 three of our Serial Innovators series, Bruce Vojak closes the loop. After two episodes on who serial innovators are and how they navigate the politics, this one is about how organisations find them, develop them — and how managers can stop 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.
In this conversation, Bruce reveals:
• Why mechanistic, CV-screening HR processes — and now AI-powered hiring filters — systematically screen out your future innovators
• The four engagement filters that actually identify a serial innovator: how they engage with problems, projects, business, and people
• The five core traits — systems thinking, above-average (but not extreme) creativity, innate curiosity, deep-expertise intuition, and the intrinsic drive to make things better
• Why π-shaped (pi-shaped) workers — broad across domains AND deep in multiple specialisms — beat T-shaped specialists
• Why innovators spot innovators — and why your best HR move is letting your existing serial innovators sit in on hires
• The career-phase development model: hard problems early, breadth via exposure, apprenticeship over mentorship, and burnout as a real risk if you don't choose your battles
• Golden handcuffs — and the "fur-lined mousetrap" most serial innovators eventually walk into
• The Dennis-and-Andy story at DEMACO/SAIC — and what Dennis did right that almost every other manager gets wrong
• The pheasant hunting in Iowa metaphor — why over-managed budgets leave no nesting ground for the future of your business
• The five things a manager has to do — air cover, patience, running interference, no bureaucratic J work, no daily progress reports
• Why phase-gate control is the slow death of breakthrough innovation
• Where Bruce respectfully diverges from Clay Christensen on whether innovation can survive inside the organisation — or has to be spun out
• The incentive traps that quietly destroy serial innovators — and why "I'm doing what's best for the company and you're giving me crap for it" is the line every serial innovator says to themselves at least once
Chapters:
00:00 Executive Innovator Balance
00:37 Sponsor Message
01:03 Serial Innovators Intro
01:08 HR Screening Problem
03:02 Four Engagement Filters
04:46 Engaging With Problems
05:28 Projects Tenacity
06:29 Business Mindset
07:16 People And Customers
08:33 Research Method War Room
10:46 Five Core Traits
12:12 Innovators Spot Innovators
14:05 Career Phases 0 To 10
17:06 Hard Problems Early
17:58 Apprenticeship Model
18:52 Burnout And Choosing Battles
22:33 Innovator Versus Inventor
24:24 Nurturing Through Exposure
27:05 Budget Barriers Story
29:59 AI Hiring And Hidden Signals
31:44 HR Triads And Policy Limits
33:04 Golden Handcuffs Risk
34:34 Managing For Impact Setup
35:52 Relational Management Style
37:41 Innovation As Dance
38:09 Incentives And Motivation
40:51 Demco SAIC Case Study
44:08 Pheasant Metaphor Budgets
47:12 Avoiding J Work
49:55 Manager Air Cover Tips
52:03 Phase Gates And Control
55:53 Ego And Incentive Traps
59:54 Christensen Inside Vs Spinout
01:03:58 Pi Shaped Innovators
01:08:16 No Excuses Innovation Preview
01:11:33 Wrap Up And Where To Find
About Bruce Vojak
Bruce is co-author of Serial Innovators and Innovation Code, founder of Breakthrough Innovation Advisors, and former Associate Dean for Administration at the University of Illinois College of Engineering. He advises executive teams and boards on how to find, support and unleash serial innovators inside mature firms.
Website: https://breakthrough-innovation-advisors.com
Book: Serial Innovators: How Individuals Create and Deliver Breakthrough Innovations in Mature Firms
About The Innovation Show
The Thinkers50-recognised podcast hosted by Aidan McCullen — 2025 Thinkers50 Innovation Award recipient, keynote speaker, author of Undisruptable — 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.
About the host
Aidan McCullen is the 2025 Thinkers50 Innovation Award recipient, host of The Innovation Show, and author of Undisruptable (Wiley). Learn more or enquire about booking him for a keynote: https://theinnovationshow.io/about-aidan-mccullen/
Subscribe to the Thursday Thought on Substack for a chance to win a copy of Serial Innovators, with thanks to Kyndryl: https://thethursdaythought.substack.com
Follow and listen:
Website: https://theinnovationshow.io
About the host: https://theinnovationshow.io/about-aidan-mccullen/
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-innovation-show/id1148455669
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/63nFKf4bsSWo3W72gWtOsK?si=b62d9614237c4450
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/theinnovationshow
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aidanmccullen

"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 Innovators series, Bruce Vojak returns to unpack the chapter most innovators learn the hard way: the politics. In over 90% of a mature firm, 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.
In this conversation, Bruce reveals:
The Galileo scenario — why a serial innovator looks at the same data as everyone else and sees a completely different solution
Why politics loses its negative meaning the moment you realise it is the only way to actually serve the customer
Strategic coherence vs tactical coherence — and the one question to ask before you push any breakthrough idea into your firm
"Crossing the bridge" from the naïve view (invention is sufficient, the manager will recognise it) to political pragmatism
The four elements of trust — competence, reliability, openness, concern — that buy a serial innovator the right to be heard
Why every breakthrough story Bruce found came from an emergent team, not a pre-formed innovation team
The "Stone Soup" model of recruiting allies one favour at a time
The Disneyland queue problem of selling internally — you think you've got buy-in, and then there are ten more people behind the next corner
Soft influence (planting seeds, telling stories, "people tolerate my conclusions but act on their own conclusions") and hard influence (data, prototypes, signed purchase orders, customer pull-through)
"The best marketing research is a signed purchase order" — the line Bruce still uses as a filter today
Buckminster Fuller's outlaw quote, and his trim tab metaphor — how one person, properly placed, can move the whole ship
Chuck House's HP defiance and the line that captures every serial innovator who ever risked their job for the work: "I wasn't trying to be defiant. I just wanted a success for HP. It never occurred to me it might cost me my job."
00:00 Sponsor Message
00:25 Why Breakthroughs Stall
01:15 Meet Bruce Vojak
02:36 Seeing Hidden Patterns
06:14 Innovation Lenses
09:28 Strategic vs Tactical Coherence
10:37 Reframing Politics
11:57 QWERTY Switching Costs
14:27 Owning the Political Work
18:00 Trust and Early Wins
21:14 Crossing the Bridge
30:04 Convincing Many Stakeholders
31:40 Engaging Allies Slowly
33:01 Emergent Teams Not Assigned
38:21 Innovation as Team Sport
39:10 Positioning for Strategy Fit
43:26 Too Many Innovators
44:38 Proof via Purchase Orders
46:25 Outlaw Area and Trim Tab
50:17 Politics Navigation Diagram
53:15 Manager Perspective Teaser
55:46 Wrap Up and Sponsor
About Bruce Vojak Bruce is co-author of Serial Innovators and Innovation Code, founder of Breakthrough Innovation Advisors, and former Associate Dean for Administration at the University of Illinois College of Engineering. He advises executive teams and boards on how to find, support and unleash serial innovators inside mature firms.
Website: https://breakthrough-innovation-advisors.com
Book: Serial Innovators: How Individuals Create and Deliver Breakthrough Innovations in Mature Firms
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.
Subscribe to the Thursday Thought on Substack for a chance to win a copy of Serial Innovators, with thanks to Kyndryl: https://thethursdaythought.substack.com
Follow and listen: Website: https://theinnovationshow.io
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-innovation-show/id1148455669
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/63nFKf4bsSWo3W72gWtOsK?si=b62d9614237c4450
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/theinnovationshow
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aidanmccullen