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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.

What Can Children Teach Us About Creativity?

Some adults tend to think that creativity is something you are born with. But, the truth is we are all creative. If your creativity seems to be at a stand still, I invite you to think about what we can learn about creativity by observing children. I just came back from our vacation with our […]

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A Bizarre New Perspective on Brainstorm

We’ve all been in a meeting where we were asked to brainstorm.  The concept is familiar. Everyone involved writes out everything they can think of on the given topic, even if it seems strange, silly, or not quite practical, because sometimes, as we let our brains really run, we come across a solutio

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Learn the magic behind the innovations of Silicon Valley from the Innovation Boot Camp

Many governments and organizations have wanted to unravel the magic behind the innovations of Silicon Valley so that they can take it back and re-create its success. After my many years of working and innovating in the valley, I’ve learned that there isn’t a one size fits all way to re-create the va

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What innovation can you leverage from military bombing to kill bacteria and viruses in the human body?

Gizmodo recently reported that some researchers at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense are working on a new way to attack bacteria and viruses in the human body using buckyballs. A buckyball is a molecule that contains 60 carbon atoms arranged in the shape of a football. While scientists ha

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Simple invention solves annoying problem in the game of golf

We all have pet-peeves, those small things that annoy us or seem unnecessarily complicated.  What if instead of letting your aggravation build up, you used obnoxious things in life to inspire you to create, innovate and strategize? Event for something like the game of golf. That’s exactly what Aran

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5 Great Reasons to Ask Questions

In a world where customers have access to an almost unlimited number of products when they ask a question on Google, most of which they may not even use, it becomes even more important to differentiate yourself in order to draw attention to what you might offer. How can you make a customer’s life ea

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A Killer Idea: Licensing an innovation back to the original innovator

The innovation of inflatable space station modules, now being developed by Bigelow Aerospace as the basis of a commercial space station, has a strange history. The concept was actually developed by NASA as part of a project called Transhab, which contemplated attaching inflatable modules to what wou

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Do we really understand what it means to be creative?

Creativity is that which separates human beings from beasts. It is more than just building a tool or expressing one’s “self” or drawing a picture. The ability to be creative involves an understanding of nature that we then change and adapt based on our needs or to solve a problem. An educational pro

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A Unique Innovation: A Microscope that Fits in Your Shirt Pocket

When Manu Prakash took his idea to Bill and Melinda Gates, he probably encountered no small amount of skepticism.  His innovation?  A paper microscope that weighs less than a few coins, fits in your pocket and costs about one dollar to manufacture. He named it the foldscope. But Prakash had done his

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Henry Ford almost lost it all by not recognizing that an innovators job is never done

One of the secrets to being an innovator is the ability to ferret out the unspoken needs and unspoken wants of a customer and then develop a product or service that fills it. But the other secret is the ability to adapt to changing circumstances and constantly improve that product or service to stay

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