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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 is it that I do??

Over the last few years, I’ve recieved a number of emails asking for a “behind the scene” look into what it is I do and how it relates to innovation.  Today there was an article published at thestreet.com based on an interview I gave a few weeks back that gives you a peak behind […]

What is it that I do??

Shock and Awe!!

A week or so ago I started getting emails and IM’s with a link to an Engadget posting from friends, family, readers to this blog and listeners to my podcast.  I knew something was up just by the sheer volume of emails with the same identical URL.   Much to my surprise when I […]

Shock and Awe!!

How do you know if your boss gets innovation?

Management Support of Innovation My last posting on “permission based innovation” generated a lot of comments and email …. some challenging me on the fact that management still needs to “get it”. So, how do you know if your management team “gets it” with regards to innovation? Some time ago, I came

How do you know if your boss gets innovation?

Permission Based Innovation

I was recently presenting to an organization (un-named to protect the innocent) on how to create an innovation culture.  During the session, the question was asked “What changes were needed to make the organization more innovative?”.  I was awestruck with the string of suggestions, mostly starting w

Permission Based Innovation

Observations from CES

It’s that time of year again to get totally exhausted trying to see everything at CES. This year, there wasn’t much in the way of true innovations being shown or announced at CES (or for that matter, at MacWorld). The hype of the term still continues. When I pushed back on the people staffing differ

Observations from CES

Education And Innovation

On my flight back to the US yesterday, I was reading the Wall Street Journal Europe and came across an editorial piece by Michael Bloomberg, the Mayor of New York City.  In the editorial, Mayor Bloomberg takes the current education “industry” (if you could really call it that) to task … “For much of

education is key to any countries ability to innovate

Being Claustrophobic

Now – I’m not claustrophobic in the traditional sense.  I’m fine with getting into elevators, small rooms or especially small office cubes.  What I am claustrophobic about is spending too much time in the office and away from customers. Many teams become so internally focused that they get myopic on

Being Claustrophobic

Road Closed By Bad Planning

In 1973, the US was caught in the grip of a crisis – the oil embargo. Gas prices jumped +300% overnight. Economic and political turmoil was the norm. During this time, many firms, including the oil companies, were on the verge of failing. Yet during this time, one company – Royal Dutch/Shell – thriv

Road Closed By Bad Planning

Walking The Plank

Imagine a long narrow wooden plank that is ten feet long and three feet wide.  Place it on the ground.  Can you walk on it?  Of course.  You can jump up and down, dance, and even walk along with your eyes shut.  Now prop the plank up so that it is three feet off the […]

Walking the plank

Slides from Innovation Tour presentation

Below are the slides I used during a recent dinner speech I gave for the Innovation Tour hosted by Brainreactions.   For long time listeners of the podcast, you will recall that I did an interview with the founder of Brainreactions (Anand Chhatpar) in one of the first podcasts.  At that time, Anand

Slides from Innovation Tour presentation