Why do smart leaders consistently make terrible choices about breakthrough ideas?
After 40 years making high-stakes innovation decisions—from co-founding and taking a company public to serving as HP's CTO and now leading CableLabs as CEO, I've decoded the decision-making patterns that separate breakthrough choices from costly mistakes.
Now I share what I've learned through Studio Notes (weekly essays) and Studio Sessions (video and audio), real frameworks for innovation decision-making that actually work under uncertainty.
I believe every leader can make better innovation decisions. You just need frameworks that account for how strategic choices actually get made, not how they should get made.
Subscribe to Studio Notes for weekly insights on why smart leaders make terrible decisions about breakthrough ideas, and how to avoid the same mistakes.
How to Improve Your Second-Order Thinking Skills
The most expensive failures don't announce themselves. They start as weak signals somebody noticed once and explained away. Second-order thinking is how you stop being that somebody.
Ideas Aren’t Getting Harder to Find. They’re Getting Harder to Approve
Every research-driven industry looks like it’s running out of ideas. It isn’t. It’s turning them down.
How to Improve Your Inversion Thinking Skills
Most innovation tools teach you how to win. Inversion thinking teaches you how to lose on purpose, so you catch the failure while you can still change course.
How to Improve Your First Principles Thinking Skills
First principles thinking is the most talked-about skill in innovation. It's also the most misunderstood. Here's what it actually looks like.
I'm Too Good at Keeping Busy. So Are You.
A confession about deep work, deferred priorities, and the three tripwires I built when I stopped trusting myself.
How to Overcome Expert Bias
Three checks that keep you in control of your own thinking when experts are in the room.
How to Overcome Confirmation Bias
Stop Cognitive Bias from Ruining Your Decisions
What I Saw McKinsey Get Wrong at HP And Couldn’t Stop
Mindjacking doesn’t always come from outside. Sometimes you watch it happen in real time and still can’t stop it.
