『Killer Innovations with Phil McKinney』のカバーアート

Killer Innovations with Phil McKinney

Killer Innovations with Phil McKinney

著者： Phil McKinney
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 Step into the world of relentless creativity with the Killer Innovations Podcast, hosted by Phil McKinney. Since 2005, it has carved its niche in history as the longest-running podcast. Join the community of innovators, designers, creatives, entrepreneurs, and visionaries who are constantly pushing boundaries and challenging the status quo. Discover the power of thinking differently and taking risks to achieve success. The podcast covers a wide range of topics, including innovation, technology, business, leadership, creativity, design, and more. Every episode is not just talk; it's about taking action and implementing strategies that can help you become a successful innovator. Each episode provides practical tips, real-life examples, and thought-provoking insights that will challenge your thinking and inspire you to unleash your creativity. The podcast archive: KillerInnovations.com About Phil McKinney: Phil McKinney, CTO of HP (ret) and CEO of CableLabs, has been credited with forming and leading multiple teams that FastCompany and BusinessWeek list as one of the “50 Most Innovative”. His recognition includes Vanity Fair naming him “The Innovation Guru,” MSNBC and Fox Business calling him "The Gadget Guy," and the San Jose Mercury News dubbing him the "chief seer."See http://philmckinney.com 経済学
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  • Why Fail Fast Innovation Advice is Wrong

    Why Fail Fast Innovation Advice is Wrong
    2025/08/12
    The most popular piece of innovation advice in Silicon Valley is wrong—and it's killing great ideas before they have a chance to succeed. I can prove it with a story about a glass of water that sat perfectly still while a car bounced beneath it. My name is Phil McKinney. I spent decades as HP's CTO making billion-dollar innovation decisions, and I learned the hard way that following "fail fast" advice cost us billions and robbed the world of breakthrough technologies. Today, I'm going to share five specific signs that indicate when an idea deserves patience instead of being killed prematurely. Miss these signs, and you'll become another "fail fast" casualty. The Water Glass That Changed Everything So there I was around 2006, sitting in Dr. Bose's lab at Bose Corporation, and he was showing me what honestly looked like just a regular car seat mounted on some automotive hardware. I'm thinking, "Okay, what's the big deal here?" But then he activates the system and has his assistant start driving over these increasingly aggressive road obstacles. And here's what blew my mind—the car chassis is bouncing around like crazy, but the seat? Perfectly still. Then Dr. Bose does something that I'll never forget. He places a full glass of water on the seat and tells his assistant to hit a speed bump at thirty miles per hour. The chassis lurches violently, but not a single drop of water spills. And here's what should terrify every "fail fast" advocate—this technology took fifty years to develop. Dr. Bose began developing the mathematical model in the 1960s. Under today's quarterly Wall Street pressure, this project would have been killed a hundred times over. When I asked Dr. Bose how he could invest in an idea for fifty years, he explained that keeping Bose private meant they weren't subject to the quarterly results pressure that often destroys patient innovation at public companies. At HP, we were trapped in that system—and it cost HP billions. How "Fail Fast" Destroyed Billions at HP As a public company, we lived and died by quarterly earnings calls. Every ninety days, we had to show growth, and that quarterly drumbeat made us masters at killing promising ideas the moment they didn't produce immediate results. Let me give you three examples that still keep me up at night: WebOS: We acquired Palm for one-point-two billion dollars in 2010. Revolutionary interface, years ahead of its time. Killed it when it didn't achieve immediate dominance. Every time you swipe between apps today, you're using thinking we threw away. Digital cameras: We literally invented the future of photography. Abandoned it the moment smartphones started incorporating cameras. HP Halo: Immersive telepresence rooms with extraordinary meeting experiences. Sold to Polycom for eighty-nine million in twenty-eleven when quarterly pressures demanded focus. We bought Poly back for three-point-three billion in twenty-twenty-two. We paid thirty-seven times more to reacquire capabilities we built. We weren't bad managers. We were trapped by the quarterly earnings system that makes "fail fast" the only option for public companies. And it was systematically destroying our breakthrough potential. Visit Studio Notes over on Substack where I discuss how these quarterly pressures shaped our boardroom decisions and what we were really thinking. Now, after making these billion-dollar mistakes, I had to figure out how to distinguish between ideas worth killing and ideas worth protecting. What I discovered changed everything—and it comes down to five things I now look for. When I see all five, I know we've got something worth being patient with. Miss even one, and you're probably wasting your time. The Five Things I Now Look For First: Does the Math Actually Work? Here's how to validate the science without being a scientist yourself. Start with peer review. Has this been published in reputable journals? Are other researchers building on it? Red flag: if the only validation comes from the inventors themselves. Next, bring in independent experts. Not consultants who'll tell you what you want to hear—find researchers who have no financial stake in your project. Share your core assumptions with them and ask them to identify any holes. Look for mathematical elegance. Dr. Bose's suspension model was beautiful in its simplicity. Overly complex models with dozens of variables often hide fundamental flaws. Here's your action step: Before investing serious money, get three independent technical reviews. If even one expert raises fundamental concerns about the underlying science, stop. No amount of patience fixes broken physics. Second: Can You Actually Build the Pieces? You need a dependency map. List every technology that has to work for your project to succeed. Then assess each one separately. For each dependency, ask: Are we developing this ourselves, waiting for someone else to solve it, or hoping it gets solved by magic? If more than one critical piece falls...
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    23 分
  • Innovation Partnership Autopsy: HP, Fossil, and the Smartwatch Market

    Innovation Partnership Autopsy: HP, Fossil, and the Smartwatch Market
    2025/08/05
    Innovation partnerships can create breakthrough markets—or hand them to competitors through terrible decisions. I know because I lived through both outcomes. Bill Geiser from Fossil and I had it exactly right. We built the MetaWatch—a smartwatch with week-long battery life, Bluetooth connectivity, and every feature that would later make the Apple Watch successful. We had HP's massive retail reach, Fossil's manufacturing scale, and the technical vision to create an entirely new market. But our organizations couldn't execute on what we knew was right. Leadership chaos at HP and innovation paralysis at Fossil killed a partnership that should have dominated the smartwatch market—handing Apple a $50 billion opportunity. I've shared the complete behind-the-scenes story of the people, strategies, and decisions that killed our partnership in my Studio Notes post "How HP and Fossil Handed Apple the Smartwatch Market." Today I'm applying the DECIDE framework to our partnership failure. If you haven't seen my DECIDE framework yet, grab the free PDF—it's the innovation decision tool I've developed over 30 years of making high-stakes choices. Because here's what this partnership taught me: having the right vision means nothing without the right decision framework. What Makes Innovation Partnerships Different? Let me start by explaining why the HP-Fossil partnership should have worked. This wasn't just another business deal—it was the perfect storm of complementary capabilities. Bill Geiser, Fossil's VP of Watch Technology, had been working on smartwatches since 2004. The man was practically clairvoyant. In 2011, he told me, "Phil, I wouldn't be shocked if Apple evolved the Nano to take advantage of this space. They'll legitimize it in consumers' minds worldwide." Bill understood something most people missed: Apple didn't need to be first to market—they needed to be first to create a platform. Meanwhile, I was developing HP's connected device strategy. We had the technology foundation, unmatched retail distribution—about 10% of consumer electronics shelf space—and the same retail muscle that helped launch the original iPod. Together, Bill and I had solved the hard problems. We had the vision, the technology, and the market insight. But we couldn't overcome the organizational machinery that prioritizes short-term comfort over long-term position. Innovation partnerships aren't just about having the right technology or market vision. They're about having the right decision framework when uncertainty meets organizational reality. The Three Partnership Decision Traps Before I show you how DECIDE could have saved our partnership, let me show you the three traps that derail even the smartest collaboration. Bill and I understood what needed to happen, but our organizations fell into every one of these traps. Trap #1: Innovation Type Mismatch This is when you apply the wrong decision framework because you've misidentified what type of innovation you're actually pursuing. It's the most common partnership killer because different innovation types require completely different approaches to risk, timing, and success metrics. In our case, Bill and I understood that smartwatches represented a platform opportunity—a new ecosystem that would change how people interact with technology. But our organizations treated it as a product extension that wouldn't threaten their existing businesses. HP's leadership viewed MetaWatch as another device in their portfolio, rather than as the foundation of a connected ecosystem spanning tablets, phones, and laptops. Fossil's leadership saw it as a "development platform" priced at $200—innovation theater that wouldn't cannibalize their traditional watch sales. Here's the partnership recognition question: Have you correctly identified what type of innovation you're pursuing together? Because applying incremental decision frameworks to breakthrough opportunities, or product frameworks to platform opportunities, kills partnerships before they can succeed. Trap #2: Safe Innovation Theater This combines revenue protection with organizational risk aversion. Both companies wanted to appear innovative without actually risking their core businesses. HP didn't want to cannibalize enterprise focus. Fossil didn't want to threaten traditional watch revenues. So instead of going all-in on market creation, both organizations positioned MetaWatch as a "safe" innovation—a development platform for engineers, not a consumer product that could disrupt markets. Bill faced an impossible organizational reality: Fossil's watch sales had tripled to $3.25 billion during the smartphone era. How do you convince leadership to risk that success for an uncertain new category? The partnership recognition question: Are you innovating to create markets, or are you innovating to appear innovative while protecting existing revenue? Trap #3: Governance Complexity Paralysis Bill and I found ourselves fighting the...
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    22 分
  • Why Great Innovators Read Rooms and not Just Data

    Why Great Innovators Read Rooms and not Just Data
    2025/07/29
    You know that moment when you walk into a meeting and immediately sense the mood in the room? Or when a proposal looks perfect on paper, but something feels off? That's your intuition working—and it's more sophisticated than most people realize. Every leader has experienced this: sensing which team member to approach with a sensitive request before you've consciously analyzed the personalities involved. Knowing a client is about to object even when they haven't voiced concerns. Feeling that a project timeline is unrealistic before you've done the detailed math. That instinctive awareness isn't luck or mystical insight—it's your brain rapidly processing patterns, experience, and environmental cues. The leaders known for "amazing judgment" haven't been blessed with superior gut feelings. They've learned to systematically enhance this natural capability through practical thinking. By the end of this post, you'll understand the science behind intuitive judgment, why some people seem to have consistently better instincts, and how to use Practical Thinking Skills to make your own intuition more reliable and actionable. What Your Intuition Really Is Intuition is your brain's rapid processing of experiences, patterns, and environmental cues that occur below the level of conscious awareness. When you sense the mood in a room, your mind is instantly analyzing dozens of subtle signals: body language, tone of voice, seating arrangements, who's speaking and who's staying quiet. This isn't mystical—it's sophisticated pattern recognition. Your brain has stored thousands of similar situations and can quickly compare current circumstances to past experiences, delivering a "gut feeling" about what's likely to happen or what approach will work. Everyone has this capability. You use it constantly: Walking into a meeting and immediately sensing the mood in the room Knowing which team member to approach with a sensitive request Feeling that a project timeline is unrealistic before you've done the math Recognizing when a client is about to say no, even if they haven't said it yet Sensing that a proposed solution won't work in your company culture The difference between people with "great intuition" and everyone else isn't the quality of their initial gut feelings—it's how systematically they validate, investigate, and act on those insights. Why Some Leaders Seem to Have "Amazing Intuition" Leaders who are known for excellent judgment have developed what I call practical thinking—the systematic approach to using their knowledge and experience to enhance their intuitive insights. Here's what they do differently: They treat gut feelings as valuable data, not emotions to dismiss or blind impulses to follow. When something feels off, they investigate systematically rather than ignoring the signal or acting without validation. They've learned to distinguish between intuition based on genuine patterns and reactions driven by personal bias, stress, or recent events. They can separate "this timeline feels aggressive because similar projects have failed" from "this timeline feels aggressive because I'm overwhelmed today." They apply structured approaches to validate their intuitive insights before making important decisions. They don't just trust their gut—they use their gut as the starting point for systematic investigation. They understand stakeholder psychology at a deeper level, using their intuitive read of people to design approaches that work with human nature rather than against it. The leaders with reputations for "brilliant intuition" have simply learned to make their natural pattern recognition more reliable and actionable through systematic frameworks. Practical Thinking: Making Intuition Systematically Reliable Practical thinking is the systematic approach to using your knowledge and experience to validate, investigate, and effectively implement your intuitive insights. It transforms valuable gut feelings into consistently reliable judgment. Think of intuition as your brain's early detection system, and practical thinking as the methodology for investigating and acting on those signals systematically. Your intuition signals: "This reorganization plan feels wrong." Practical thinking investigates: "What specific elements am I reacting to? Is it the timeline, the stakeholder alignment assumptions, or the communication approach?" Your intuition warns: "This customer seems hesitant despite saying yes." Practical thinking explores: "What might they be worried about that they can't voice directly? How can I address their real concerns?" Your intuition detects: "This team meeting feels tense." Practical thinking examines: "What underlying conflicts or pressures might be driving this dynamic? What does each person need to feel successful?" When you combine intuitive insight with systematic investigation frameworks, you develop judgment that gets more accurate with experience. This is how great leaders seem to "...
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    26 分
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