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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.

Is your compensation structure holding your organization back from innovation success?

I’ve been recently laid up recovering from some medical work that I had done.  During this time, a number of my friends sent me their books to read.  Needless to say, I’m well stocked with reading material for the forciable future.  One person who recently gave me their new book (to be released […]

Is your compensation structure holding your organization back from innovation success?

We don’t have time for innovation, we need a solution now!

I’m amazed at how many executives will put off investing time and energy in innovation until they are faced with a crisis.  Then they run around lamenting the fact that the innovation funnel is empty.  Why are they surprised? They clearly understand that you need to invest in sales resources (people

We don’t have time for innovation, we need a solution now!

Law of Innovation #3 – The Law of Resources

In the 7 Immutable Laws of Innovation, the Law of Resources states: Innovation requires a committed level of resources (people, money, time, equipment) over an extended period of time.  The level of resourcing is the validation for the importance and commitment the organization devotes to innovation

Law of Innovation #3 – The Law of Resources

Are you ever too old for the innovation game?

Are you ever too old for the innovation game?  I sure hope not because I have no plans to stop.  In the case of David Packard, he retired from HP at the ripe old of 81 yet continued to devote his creative abilities to innovate undersea robots and imaging technologies with the Monterey Bay Aquarium,

Are you ever too old for the innovation game?

Crossing the chasm has a new meaning in today’s world

Geoffrey Moore, the author of “Crossing The Chasm” and I have had the opportunity to spend time together in the past including him agreeing to be interviewed for the podcast (one of the most popular podcast to-date).  If you’re interested, here are links to the interview: Part 1 and Part 2. I came a

Crossing the chasm has a new meaning in today’s world

The 7 Immutable Laws of Innovation – Follow them or risk the consequences

. ? Over the years of being in the innovation space, I’ve discovered a set of laws by trial and error. I have the scars from the school of hard knocks to validate that these 7 laws of innovation are critical for innovation success. If you violate any one of them, the consequences can be […]

Laws of innovation

The ultimate of constraint based innovation – burn the boats!

Seth Godin recently made a post on his blog about putting yourself into an impossible position and then setting back and watching incredibly things happen. I’m a big believer of constraint based innovation where leaders purposefully restrict some key resource(s) (people, money, time, etc) and then f

The ultimate of constraint based innovation – burn the boats!

Why is it that most organizations fail at innovation leadership?

In most organizations these days, decision making is held in the hands of the few.  This is especially true when it comes to innovation. Rather than taking advantage of the passion, insight and expertise of the entire organization, the executives make the call on what ideas to consider, what ideas t

Why is it that most organizations fail at innovation leadership?

Why best practices does not equal best strategy (video)

Best practices for innovation makes no sense. The consulting industry is built up on the idea of taking the “best” from each of their clients and merging them together and then selling them to all the companies within a given industry. So why is this a bad idea? Best practices make everyone the same

Why best practices does not equal best strategy (video)

Ignore The Obvious speech on Innovation at Argyle Executive Forum (slides)

This morning I gave a keynote at the Argyle Executive Forum event in NYC.  The title of the talk was “Ignore The Obvious” covering a wide range of areas to help the audience better understand and use innovation as a competitive advantage: Doing the obvious is what everyone expects Doing the obvious

Ignore The Obvious speech on Innovation at Argyle Executive Forum (slides)