Phil McKinney's Blog

A common request I get is to create something that listeners of the podcast can share with their managers and team members.  Something that shares the foundational "what" and the "how" of innovation without listening to the +60 hours of audio that now makes-up the podcast catalog.

For the last number of months, I've been recording the audio to create a CD that anyone can download, burn and share.

The project is not yet done but I wanted to give you something ...  The links below are to the podcast audio files that will ultimately will be used to create the CD.

Send me your feedback ...

Track 1: Why is innovation important?      (show notes)

Track 2: A better way to innovate      (show notes)

Track 3: Focus your innovation search      (show notes)

Track 4: Ideation - Creating killer ideas by asking killer questions      (show notes)

Track 5: Ranking your ideas      (show notes)

Track 6: Execution - Translating idea to innovations      (show notes)

Posted by Phil McKinney at 11:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This is a speech I gave at the "Bootcamp for Growing Companies and Entrepreneurs" hosted by the Business Alliance.   The PowerPoint slides contain speaker notes.  The speech was recorded and the audio will be posted soon.

Updated 4/20/08:  Link to audio:  Creative Economy - Recorded LIVE

Topic:  The Creative Economy

Background:  Change is something we may try to stop but never will.  From the agriculture economy to the manufacturing economy to the knowledge/information economy to that of the creative economy … where wealth creation is dependent upon the capacity of a nation to continually create ideas.  In short, a nation without a vibrant creative labor force does not possess the knowledge base to succeed in the creative economy, and must depend on ideas produced elsewhere.

The creative economy is a new a world in which people work with their brains instead of their hands.   A world in which innovation is more important than mass production.  A world in which investment buys new concepts or the means to create them, rather than new machines.

In this new world … ideas are the new global currency ...

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Link to the PowerPoint slides ... which are also available for download.

Link to audio:  Creative Economy - Recorded LIVE

Posted by Phil McKinney at 09:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Have you ever notices how things look differently when you stay up late ... when you've been working way too many hours ... when you're clearly suffering from severe sleep deprivation?  Strange things happen in the middle of the night.

When we are well rested, our "filters" will rank/disqualify ideas based on our experiences.  No matter how hard we try, the filers are always there. 

Take advantage of the times when you’ve pushed yourself too far.  Your natural idea/mental filters are down.

Posted by Phil McKinney at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The bandwidth of the world is much greater than your TV or your broadband connection.  You cannot predict what is happening in the world from the couch or office.  You need to immerse yourself and experience the world.  Put yourself in uncomfortable positions to see the needs, interact with customers, understand your partners and rub elbows with others who "think differently" from yourself.

I'm not talking about going to an industry event or tradeshows.  I'm talking about going out into the real-world and observing real-life.

Go out and touch the world -- you could be surprised by what you see, feel and experience.

Posted by Phil McKinney at 12:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Good is a known target.  Its what we all agree to.  Its the result that emerges when the goal is consensus.  Good is not good.  Excellence comes from exploring the unknown.  It comes from taking risks and leaving the path that everyone else is on and exploring down the dark alleys.  It requires us going places that are more than just a little scary.

Excellent is about not accepting just good.  Don't give in just to achieve consensus.

If you accept good, you will never get excellent.

Posted by Phil McKinney at 11:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Cool is not the end goal.  Dressing in black doesn't mean you have better ideas.  It becomes the mask that many hide behind to avoid being truly original.  Resist the urge to dress like the "creative's" within your job category (e.g. black for designers, jeans/t-shirts for web types, etc).  If your willing to compromise to dress like others, are you willing to compromising your vision/ideas/creativity?

Be honest .... Are you spending time looking at your competitors and focusing on how to create "cool" products/services like them?   Who owns the definition of cool?  If you are focusing on the others to define cool, then its obviously not you.

Here is a radical idea ... Why not try being un-cool?  You might find yourself defining the new hit thing.

Cool is conservative fear dressed in black.

Posted by Phil McKinney at 09:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We all fall into the trap of complaining.  When it comes to complaints, you have one of two choices.  You can continue to complain and get more and more frustrated - or you can fix it.

Early in my career, I was involved with some of the early software companies here in the valley.  One of the biggest complains we had was around duplicating the disks (yes ... 5 1/4" floppies) that would go into our packaging.  Back in those days, we would hire high school kids to set in front of a PC and duplicate by hand.  The problem was that kids would be kids.  We would end up with blank disks (oops - forgot to stick than one in) to disks with prank software (remember: this was before virus scanning tools).

It seems that others had the same complaints and proposed the idea of creating an automatic disk duplicator.  The company was Mountain Computer (Scotts Valley, CA) and the product was ImageCopier (Code Name: McKinley).

I was so convinced that this was a complaint that I could and should fix, I signed up to be responsible for writing the software (as a contractor) while others designed the hardware.  In record time, we developed something that was a direct fix to the biggest frustrations for software companies .. the product went on to be the leading duplicator for many years.

My advice: fix what drives you (or your customers) crazy.  

Posted by Phil McKinney at 11:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Some background:  I've been asked many times on how I keep myself creatively fresh.  I've never document them before but thought it might be useful to share some of the things I do to stay sharp.  The best format I can think of is to share them in the form of rules.  I'm not sure how many I will come up with but stay tuned and we'll see how far I get ....

Rule #1:  Share what you know and learn from others

I have found that best way for me to learn is to teach.  Take my podcast as an example.  I started it about three years ago with the mission to use it as a platform to mentor others in what I had learned/discovered over my career.  My original mentor (Bob Davis) gave me the foundation, guidance, feedback, tools, skills and direction I needed.  In return all he asked was that I mentor others later in my career.  To pay it forward. 

What I have gotten back from the podcast is much more than I have given.  The listeners have reached out and shared their ideas, their frustrations, what they have done to bring innovation to their organization and as a result I have learned from them.  The mentor becomes the mentee. 

Never become over confident and believe that you are "the" expert that everyone else should come to.  When that happens - stop what you are doing and go into a business you know nothing about.  Only then will you challenge your creativity muscle.

Are you following rule #1?

Posted by Phil McKinney at 01:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

As we move from the information/knowledge economy to the creative economy, a new category of jobs will need to be created.  The new jobs will be critical to helping companies make the transition from the "old world" to the "new". 

For those of us who watched the "geezers" (anyone over 65 years old) struggle with the emergence of the information/knowledge economy, we can only guess what the transition will be to the creative economy.

So ... below is a sample job description of one possible role .....

Title:  Creativity Guru

Background: 

Once leading company finds itself in the uncomfortable position of loosing market share and profits as a result of little to no focus on creating products and services that matter to their customers.  The company felt that it could succeed by doing what they have always done.  They missed the transition to the creative economy and still doubt that there is such a shift underway.  They do acknowledge it needs to do something and therefor agrees to adopt this trend called "innovation" as the savior for the business.

Responsibilities (as defined by the company): 

Create products like Acme Industries, our chief competitor, that has taken the market leadership role,  so that we have the same profit margin and market cap.

Responsibilities (what it should be): 

Take long sabbaticals away from the office to ensure no undo influence from the "corporate anti-bodies".  Use these sabbaticals to immerse yourself into markets and customers and to find new, never before contemplated market opportunities.  Find those unspoken needs and wants.  Bring these ideas to the executive team and convince them on the viability and opportunity.  Don't take no for an answer.  Be the innovation champion.

 

If you were the hiring manager, what skills and experiences would you look for? 

Post your thoughts in the comments section.

Posted by Phil McKinney at 01:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Note:  I've invited my summer interns to write-up their thoughts/opinions/lessons learned from the summer experiment.  Below is the first post from Curtis ...

Phil

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Things I learned from Phil . . . .

1. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing , always produce, complete the assignments that you are given it may require work after hours but that is the price of success.
2. Never be too proud to ask for help.
3. Remember it doesn’t matter what you do at work or what your title is - you are yourself at home.
4. Some of the most historic deals in technology don’t happen in offices but at hole in the wall restaurants.
5. Wienerschnitzel is open till midnight!
6. Remember it doesn’t matter who you are or who your boss is - what ever mom says is law
7. Have fun tonight, but remember if you do something stupid I will bail you out of jail. We will have a talk and you don’t want to have that talk.
8. One of the most productive ways to get one intern to finish a project, have him share a room with and intern who snores… Really loud.
9. You can never have too many cables - who knows when old tech can come back in style
10. Just because you get a video games doesn’t mean you will have any time to play it
11. Do your best

Posted by Phil McKinney at 06:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)