The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney

Have we become addicted to innovation? I love the next new thing as much as anyone as evidenced by all of the stuff I've accumulated. As an innovators, the challenge is how to get the innovation timing right to satisfy the market and stay ahead of the competition. The pull on companies to  create the next great product or service  is hard to avoid. Consumers are asking and your competition is on y...

During some recent travels, I started noticing the comments and suggestions that "being part of Silicon Valley must be exciting". As I paid more attention, it came across as almost hero worship of Silicon Valley and the companies its has launched. It's like people believe that innovation outside Silicon Valley is a rare if not impossible occurrence. I have to admit that when I first showed up in S...

When it comes to looking and selecting the right ideas to get behind, we all suffer from  biases and blind spots . When you look at the success rate for venture capitalists, the only expect to have one hit out 10. So, why do we repeatedly find ourselves backing the wrong ideas and what can we do about it? While some if not many companies will fail, there are a corresponding set of  great ideas tha...

In a recent discussion with some colleagues, we get to discussing the current state of the US and global economy. Why has the economic recovery been so slow which has caused the middle class income to stagnate? In my opinion, its because the companies and jobs we are creating are not delivering high value products or services. What we need is innovation driven entrepreneurship. The State Of The Cu...

Over the years, I noticed that I seem to get a similar set of questions from the participants at my talks, workshops, and innovation boot camps. What this tells me is that there are a set of common questions about innovation that are on everyone's mind. Here are the 9 common questions on innovation that I get. How do I define innovation? Innovation is when an idea becomes real to the point where s...

Technology megatrends, or what some call  long range technology roadmaps , are an important input into your strategic thinking as you build your innovation pipeline. I've been researching, tracking and presenting on technology megatrends for the last 30 years of my career. During a live show broadcast on Facebook, a member of the audience asked about what technology trends would have major impact...

Over the last few decades, the importance of design has been growing in the context of how to create disruptive game-changing innovations. Human centered design (HCD) is the way that innovators integrate design with a clear view of customer in to the process of  creating an innovation that has impact . Be careful as  bad design  can doom innovation to the trash heap. What is human centered design?...

When it comes to sourcing innovation, most focus on trying to come up with a clever technical or business hook. Over years of experience of both innovation success and failures, I've uncovered three areas of focus for sourcing innovation that will have significant impact. Before jumping into the three areas of focus, there is a basic skill that is required. That is the ability to create questions...

Some of the smartest, most creative people I know spend time doing nothing but thinking. For example Einstein was often criticized for his day dreaming. His form of day dreaming was to run his thought experiments.  Experiments carried out completely within his imagination. Our society doesn't embrace or allow for day dreaming. Most organizations view this as being lazy and unproductive. Companies...

When I was a software engineer, one area of importance was the design and testing of user interfaces. The work was frustrating because you had to decipher what the user was "thinking" to understand how they would use your software. Over the years, the research has taken on the challenges of human computer interaction with next generation technology. Our guest today, Dr. Chris Harrison from Carnegi...

As humans, we have some unique abilities. We are self-aware, we exhibit critical thinking and we have the  ability to be creative and innovate . Will that always be the case? Some think that artificial intelligence (AI) will someday take over creativity and innovation. In my opinion, AI will become a tool that will help improve our creativity and innovation but I doubt that it can takeover what I...

It's human nature to want to make a lasting impact with the innovations we create. To do something meaningful and enduring. To create  a lasting legacy  that makes the world a better place. I call this innovation with purpose. In some cases, we need help to realize a vision we have that manifests this idea of innovation with purpose. This week at an annual event we host in Keystone, Colorado, we p...

Once we have experienced that taste of success, we will do anything to experience it again but instead, we fall into the trap of success. Success leads us down the path of taking a more conservative approach in hopes that we can repeat the success we just experienced. The assumption is that if we repeat what we just did, we increase the likelihood that we will repeat the success again. That is a b...

The pace of innovation continues to accelerate and in many instences, we are surprised from the unintended consequences from  innovation adoption . While innovators focus on the adoption, we overlook the need for society to adapt to these new innovations and the impact it has. [shareable cite="John Maynard Kaynes - 1930"]I believe that this is a wildly mistaken interpretation of what is happening...

Helping companies and teams to unlock their natural creative ability can be daunting to innovation leaders. One method that I have found incredibly useful is to use  improv comedy skills  as a way to get team members comfortable being uncomfortable since in improv, you never know what's going to happen next. Kelly Leonard, Executive Director of Insights and Applied Improvisation at  The Second Cit...

What inspirations feed your ideas for innovation? In this case, seeing a news report on a tragic death of a 6 month old baby let a young entrepreneur to create an innovation that could save kids left in the car. Bishop Curry is headed into the 6th grade this fall. Its was a the tragic  death of Fern Theford , a six month old infant, in 2016 that was the inspiration to innovate a solution to preven...

What would you think if your child, grandchild, niece or nephew came to you and said that they were skipping college to start a business? Almost a year ago,  I interviewed Nick Titus  who was soon to be a High School Senior about his science fair project that was quickly becoming an innovation that could impact the lives of those who had lost mobility. To get an update, I invited Nick back to the...

This is for CxO's or those who want to eventually be a CxO. How are you thinking about innovation within your organization? What are you doing to ensure that you have the right innovation leader in place? Why Is Innovation Important? A recent McKinsey & Company surveyed more than 2,000 executives and asked how important is innovation to them. Not surprisingly, +80% responded that innovation was ex...

The Truth And Disappointment Of Orphaned Innovations S13 Ep17

Inside any size organization, getting everyone engaged on innovation can be daunting. Its not just as simple as saying that innovation is important. You need to show the organization how. At Adobe, Mark Randall reversed engineered his approach to grassroots innovation and structured into a process called Kickbox . He didn't stop there. He and Adobe decided to open source the Kickbox approach to gr...

The boomer market is quickly becoming the target demographic that is driving a new category of technology and innovation. The desire to allow those in this gray wave of aging adults to age in place is one area of innovation we all can appreciate. In this weeks show, serial entrepreneur and technology executive Wendi Burkhardt shares how she found her purpose project by bringing technology and inno...

I've been going back and looking at past shows that had guests in an attempt to trigger ideas for new guests we should invite to be on the show. During the process, I started to see patterns of common attributes across this group that I label as the most the innovative people I've interviewed. The show archive goes back to March 2005 and we've had more than 100 innovation experts and authors. Thes...

While most innovators think about innovation across two types, incremental and disruptive, there is actually a third type; little ideas. Little ideas are complimentary to the existing offerings thus low risk. At the same time, little ideas can have high impact. The risk for little ideas is the desire by managements and the MBA's to apply traditional management approaches. The typical approaches, s...

When I was in college, the way we learned was lecture, reading and testing — with a little bit of lab work tossed in for good measure. When it comes to leadership, universities still teaches using this same model. The result is the struggle for graduates to understand the difference between management and leadership. To prepare […]

A few shows back, I ranted on why I disagree with an article from an executive at Accenture who said that innovation inside large organizations was impossible. In this show, rather than you listening to more of my experiences, I decided to bring on a listener of the show who has direct experience of being a successful […]