The Innovators Studio
A real studio. Where real companies work through real innovation decisions with Phil McKinney. Studio Notes every Monday. Studio Sessions every Wednesday.
The idea was never the hard part. It never is. The call is.
I've spent 40 years in rooms where those calls get made. As HP's CTO. As a co-founder who took a company public. As CEO of CableLabs. Across thousands of decisions — some that worked, some I'd rather forget.
This is where I share what that actually looks like.
You're not missing data. You're missing recognition.
You've sat in the meeting. The team is excited. The business case is solid. The market analysis checks out. And something feels off — but you can't name it.
So you approve it. Or you kill it. Either way, you're guessing.
Six months later, you see what you missed. It was right there. You just didn't know what you were looking at.
That's not a failure of intelligence. It's the absence of pattern recognition — the ability to see what's actually happening in an innovation decision before it fully reveals itself.
Chess grandmasters don't calculate more moves than amateurs. They recognize positions faster. ER doctors don't run more tests than interns. They see what matters immediately. Innovation decisions work the same way. The patterns are predictable. Cataloged across four decades. And they're learnable, if someone shows you what to look for.
Three ways into the studio
Studio Notes // Every Monday morning
The real stories behind innovation decisions — the ones I couldn't tell while they were still happening. Like how I convinced HP's board to spend $1.2 billion on Palm, then watched a new CEO destroy it in 49 days while I was recovering from surgery. Or why I evaluated over 30,000 innovation ideas at HP and learned that the best ones weren't losing to bad ideas. They were losing to exhaustion.
Short. Specific. Something you can use before your 10am meeting. Free to subscribe. Paid members get the full archive, community, and comments.
Subscribe to Studio Notes — Free →
Studio Sessions // Every Wednesday
Twenty years running. Tens of millions of downloads. Now sharper than ever.
Each episode is a thinking tool — not theory you nod along to, but a pattern or question you'll start noticing in your own decisions. Video and audio. New every Wednesday.
Work With Me // By conversation
For leaders facing their hardest innovation call. You bring the problem. We work it together — not from a playbook, but by applying 40 years of pattern recognition to your specific situation. No team of junior consultants. No canvas to fill in. You work with me directly.
What pattern recognition looks like in practice
Three VPs sent me the same proposal: HP should implement 20% time like Google. The logic was seductive, the precedent was proven, and I was ready to approve it. Then a retired engineer — HP employee number nine — told me something that changed everything. It had nothing to do with time allocation. It had to do with a padlock on a tool room door.
That story led to the Innovation Program Office. Three consecutive years on Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies list. After I retired, HP killed the program. They haven't made the list since. Thirteen years and counting.
That's what Studio Notes reads like. Not theory. Not motivation. A specific pattern, from a real decision, that you can use.
This isn't a methodology.
Anyone can teach you a framework in a half-day workshop. You'll leave with a canvas, a set of steps, and the feeling that you've learned something. Then you'll sit in the room where the decision actually matters and none of it will help.
Frameworks are for planning. Pattern recognition is for the moment of decision. Most innovation consultants sell you a process. What leaders actually need is to see the pattern, trust what they're seeing, and make the call.
Monday mornings. Your inbox. Free.
Studio Notes is the simplest way in. One essay a week. A pattern you didn't see, a question worth asking, a thinking tool you can use immediately.
Most readers tell me it's the thing they actually read on Monday morning. Some of them run divisions. A few of them run companies.
Studio Notes — weekly innovation decision insights, free to your inbox.
Free. Unsubscribe anytime. Paid upgrade available at $60/year.
Go deeper when you're ready
20 years. New name. Sharper focus.
This started as Killer Innovations in 2005 — one of the first innovation podcasts, eventually nationally syndicated across 30+ radio stations. Tens of millions of downloads later, the content evolved past the name. Less about innovation tips. More about how to see what others miss in the decisions that matter.
The Innovators Studio is the next chapter: sharper focus, better integration, same commitment to substance. The full archive is still available at killerinnovations.com →
See the pattern. Make the call.
Studio Notes // Mondays | Studio Sessions // Wednesdays | Work With Me // By conversation