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Phil McKinney

Phil McKinney is an innovator, podcaster, author, and speaker. He is the retired CTO of HP. Phil's book, Beyond The Obvious, shares his expertise and lessons learned on innovation and creativity.

9 Types of Innovation Tools

Innovation tools allow us to do things we naturally can’t, which unleashes our creative potential. It can be hard to pinpoint the right one for your organization with thousands of options out there. Let’s explore several innovation tool categories that will help improve performance. 9 Types of Innovation

Innovation Tools

Being Thrown Under The Bus: The Dilemma of Blame

This last week, I got pulled back into a Hewlett-Packard Enterprise ($HPE) news cycle. Last Thursday, the UK courts ruled there was fraud by Autonomy, their CEO and CFO related to its acquisition by HPE. When HPE wrote down $8.8 billion against the acquisition in 2012, HPE executive leadership got b

An image showing the words Blame and Responsibility

10 Exercises That Will Improve Your Creativity

Creativity is one of the most important skills you can have. It unlocks the door to game-changing ideas. Although some people have it naturally, some exercises help in improving creativity. 10 Exercises That Will Improve Your Creativity 1.     Take a walk outside: Breaking free of your work, moving around,

Creative Exercises

Finding Ideas In The Mundane and Familiar

How many times have you walked past something and not really seen it? How many times have you seen something a million times without ever really noticing it? It’s easy to take the familiar for granted. We’re so used to it, we see it as mundane and stop paying attention. “The Disease of the Familiar”

one lightbul on in a stack of lightbulbs

How to Escape the Innovation Benchmark Trap

Benchmarking compares your organization to others to measure your performance and identify areas for improvement. When done correctly, benchmarking can help you learn from your peers and identify areas for improvement. However, benchmarking can also have negative consequences if done incorrectly. How do you escape the innovation benchmark trap? Good

Innovation Benchmark

Sharing is Caring – So Share Your Idea!

One of the biggest mistakes we make in life is convincing ourselves that our ideas are unique and ours alone. We rationalize keeping our ideas to ourselves because we are afraid that others will steal them, or worst—we believe our ideas aren’t good enough. Our ideas are precious, but they aren’t tha

graphic of sharing ideas and why teams are important

What Bad Habits are Killing Your Creativity?

It takes practice and patience to develop your creativity, and there are bad habits people learn which crush their creativity. But like all bad habits, we can break these if we are willing to work at it! What Are Habits? Habits are things you do automatically, without thinking. Bad habits

Bad Habits

Don’t Play Follow The Leader With Your Career

Why do so many people believe they can become successful simply by copying what successful people do? Identifying a role model and then playing follow the leader is an age-old habit of looking for “shortcuts” to success. Why? Are They Smarter?   Many people believe their role models are successful b

follow the leader signage on a road

Most Downloaded Episode of 2021

With the start of a new year, let’s look back at the most downloaded episode of 2021. The Most Downloaded Episode of 2021 As an innovation leader, I encounter loads of information every day. I like to use tools that capture/organize this information and bring it together in

most downloaded episode

Problems Needing To Be Solved: Where To Start?

Problems needing to be solved abound, but knowing where to start isn’t always obvious. It takes creativity and insight into human behavior to identify which problem deserves attention.

problems are opportunities that need solving