The Innovation Show

"Innovation isn't a gift. It's a simple, repeatable five-step process that anyone, at any level, can learn — with nothing more than a stack of Post-it notes." Carla Johnson, author of RE:Think Innovation, is on a mission to teach one million people to consistently come up with new, great and reliable ideas. In this anniversary-edition conversation, she takes Aidan McCullen through her updated Whee...

"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 than...

"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 visio...

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 self-...

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 fr...

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, au...

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 kee...

"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...

"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 Inn...

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 desc...

"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. And...

"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 actuall...

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 happen...

What if the real driver of innovation isn't alignment—but conflict? In this episode of The Innovation Show , Aidan McCullen is joined by Jeff and Staney DeGraff, co-authors of The Innovation Code , to explore a powerful idea: innovation emerges from the tension between opposing perspectives—not from consensus. Drawing on decades of research and real-world application, they introduce four archetype...

AI is triggering a "big bang" in how organizations operate—and those that adapt fastest will win. In this episode, Stephen Wunker and Jonathan Brill explore the concept of the Octopus Organization , where intelligence is distributed, decisions happen at the edge, and workflows—not jobs—are automated. Drawing on biology, they explain how autonomy, governance, and visibility can coexist to unlock sp...

How do you negotiate firmly, fairly, and effectively — without becoming a jerk?   In this episode of The Innovation Show , Aidan McCullen speaks with Barry Nalebuff — Yale professor, entrepreneur, and author of Split the Pie — about a principled approach to negotiation built around one simple idea: identify the pie , the extra value created only when both sides reach agreement, and split it equall...

What if Nokia saw the iPhone coming and still couldn't stop it? In this episode, strategy professor Timo Partanen, former Nokia market intelligence leader (2001–2009), reveals what was really inside Nokia's internal iPhone threat briefing presented to senior leadership. Nokia had tracked Apple for years. They saw the signals like touchscreen innovation, strategic hires, and shifting user expectati...

How did Nokia survive one of the most dramatic collapses in business history? In this episode, we explore the hidden driver of strategy under pressure: emotion . Drawing on research based on 100+ interviews inside Nokia between 2007 and 2013 , INSEAD's Quy Huy and Aalto University's Timo Vuori join Aidan McCullen to explain how large organizations can execute radical pivots—not just through analys...

Most people believe the iPhone killed Nokia. But the real story behind Nokia's collapse is far more complex — and much more human. At its peak Nokia controlled nearly 50% of the global mobile phone market and had over one billion customers. Yet within a few years the company lost the smartphone war as Apple and Google reshaped the industry. In this episode we continue our deep dive into the resear...

Nokia didn't lose the smartphone battle because it lacked smart people or a strategy deck. It lost because fear and shared emotions quietly reshaped attention, filtered information, and weakened truth-telling. Quy Huy (INSEAD) and Timo Vuori (Aalto University)—authors of the 2016 research on Nokia's collapse—explain how leaders hid emotions behind "technology and finance talk," how dissent was pun...

BlackBerry once ruled the business world. Presidents, CEOs, and Wall Street relied on its encrypted devices. Then the iPhone arrived — and everything changed. In this episode, Jacquie McNish, co-author of Losing the Signal , unpacks the untold story behind: • The improbable rise of Research In Motion • The 2011 global outage crisis • The NTP patent war • 9/11 and encrypted messaging dominance • Th...

Why does corporate innovation fail so often — even with talented teams and strong ideas? In this episode of The Innovation Show with Aidan McCullen , intrapreneur and innovation veteran Chuck House returns to explain why innovation dies when projects, programs, and strategy aren't clearly connected — and why executives often misjudge innovation timelines because they're optimizing established busi...

This week's guest is David Rogers, Columbia Business School professor and author of Digital Transformation Playbook . We discuss digital transformation strategy, AI in business, disruptive innovation, platform business models, network effects, and leadership in the age of AI. If you're navigating digital transformation or AI strategy, this episode is essential listening. 00:00 Introduction and Spo...

In this episode, we explore the strategic brilliance of Taylor Swift with Kevin Evers, author of There's Nothing Like This . From genre-shifting reinventions to billion-dollar tours, Taylor's evolution isn't just musical—it's a masterclass in brand, resilience, and audience engagement. 🎯 We cover: The pivot from country to global pop dominance How Taylor handled public backlash & the Kanye/Kardas...

In this episode, Aidan McCullen welcomes Kevin Evers, editor at Harvard Business Review Press and author of There's Nothing Like This: The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift . Together, they explore how Taylor Swift built not just a music career—but a global business empire. From fearless reinvention and blue ocean strategy to her mastery of fan engagement and brand evolution, Taylor Swift's rise is...