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Seeing The Big Picture To Innovate

Phil McKinney
Phil McKinney
— 1 min read
The Innovators Studio podcast cover art: Seeing The Big Picture To Innovate

The ability to keep perspective while continuously innovating is a challenge. We tend to get ourselves hyper focused and risk overlooking really great ideas. So who do keep the big picture perspective while still staying focused to create innovations that have impact?

Segment 1: Seeing The Big Picture To Innovate

Key Skills:

  • Boundry Crosser:  Success will come to people with a very wide and multi-disciplinary backgrounds
  • Metaphor Maker: Using methaphors to capture the connections/similarities and therefore the vision
  • Pattern Watcher:  The abilty to pick out meaningful trends from the flood of information

Segment 2: Killer Question Of The Week

Create metahpors by:

1) Answer the following the question:

[shareable]What are the assumptions that define the industry?[/shareable]

  • Comparing the assumptions with other industries.
  • What are the breakthroughs in those industries?
  • Create a metaphor for each breakthrough by tying it back to your industry.

Segment 3:  Closing Thoughts

“The world is emblematic.  Parts of speach are metaphors because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.”  Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The metaphor is perhaps one of man’s most frutiful potentials.  Its effeciency verges on magic – its a tool for creation that God left inside when He made man.”  Jose Ortega Gasset

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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.


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