Killer Innovations with Phil McKinney - A Show About Ideas Creativity And Innovation
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Killer Innovations with Phil McKinney - A Show About Ideas Creativity And Innovation
Forty years of billion-dollar innovation decisions. The real stories, the hard calls, and the patterns that repeat across every organization that's ever tried to build something new. Phil McKinney shares what those decisions actually look like. Phil was HP's CTO when Fast Company named it one of th...
Recent Episodes
955 episodes
How To Build a Decision System That Protects Your Thinking
The best decision-makers aren't better at deciding. They're better at controlling when, where, and how they decide. It took me twenty years to figure...
How to Build a Decision System that Protects Your Thinking
The best decision-makers aren't better at deciding. They're better at controlling when, where, and how they decide. It took me twenty years to figure...
How To Quit Defending Decisions You Know Are Wrong
Ron Johnson was one of the most successful retail executives in America. He'd made Target hip. He'd built the Apple Store from nothing into a retail p...
How to Quit Defending Decisions You Know are Wrong
Ron Johnson was one of the most successful retail executives in America. He'd made Target hip. He'd built the Apple Store from nothing into a retail p...
How To Think for Yourself When Everyone Disagrees With You
When neuroscientists scanned the brains of people going along with a group, they expected to find lying. What they found instead was something far str...
How to Think For Yourself When Everyone Disagrees With You
When neuroscientists scanned the brains of people going along with a group, they expected to find lying. What they found instead was something far str...
How to Make Better Decisions Under Pressure
“We need an answer by the end of the day.” Ten words. And the moment you hear them, something shifts inside your chest. Your pulse ticks up. Your focu...
Better Decisions Under Pressure
"We need an answer by the end of the day."
Ten words. And the moment you hear them, something shifts inside your chest. Your pulse ticks up. You...
How to Beat Decision Fatigue
A nurse in Pennsylvania had been on her feet for twelve hours. She was supposed to go home, but the unit was short-staffed, so she stayed. During that...
How to Beat Decision Fatigue
A nurse in Pennsylvania had been on her feet for twelve hours. She was supposed to go home, but the unit was short-staffed, so she stayed. During that...
How to Stop Overthinking Your Decisions
You've got a decision you've been putting off. Maybe it's a career move. An investment. A difficult conversation you keep rehearsing in your head but...
How to Stop Overthinking Your Decisions
You've got a decision you've been putting off. Maybe it's a career move. An investment. A difficult conversation you keep rehearsing in your head but...
Mindjacking: When Your Opinions Aren’t Yours
You've built a toolkit over the last several episodes. Logical reasoning. Causal thinking. Mental models. Serious intellectual firepower. Now the unco...
Mindjacking - When your Opinions are Not Yours
You've built a toolkit over the last several episodes. Logical reasoning. Causal thinking. Mental models. Serious intellectual firepower.
Now th...
CES 2026: Battle of the AI Robots
This week, I'm in Las Vegas, Nevada, at the annual Consumer Electronics Show 2026. If you've been following me for long, you know I do this every year...
CES 2026 - Battle of the AI Robots
Welcome to this week's show. I'm recording this episode from my hotel room here in Las Vegas, Nevada, at the annual Consumer Electronics Show 2026.
Thinking 101: A Pause, A Reflection, And What Might Come Next
Twenty-one years. That's how long I've been doing this. Producing content. Showing up. Week after week, with only a handful of exceptions—most of them...
Thinking 101: A Pause, A Reflection, And What Might Come Next
Twenty-one years.
That's how long I've been doing this. Producing content. Showing up. Week after week, with only a handful of exceptions—most o...
Mental Models — Your Thinking Toolkit
Before the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986, NASA management officially estimated the probability of catastrophic failure at one in one hundr...
Mental Models - Your Thinking Toolkit
Before the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986, NASA management officially estimated the probability of catastrophic failure at one in one hundr...
Numerical Thinking: How to Find the Truth When Numbers Lie
Quick—which is more dangerous: the thing that kills 50,000 Americans every year, or the thing that kills 50? Your brain says the first one, obviously....
Numerical Thinking: How to Find the Truth When Numbers Lie
Quick—which is more dangerous: the thing that kills 50,000 Americans every year, or the thing that kills 50?
Your brain says the first one, obvi...
The Clock is Screaming (And My Grandson is Listening)
I stepped out of the shower in March and my chest split open. Not a metaphor. The surgical incision from my cardiac device procedure just… opened. Blo...
The Clock is Screaming
I stepped out of the shower in March and my chest split open.
Not a metaphor. The surgical incision from my cardiac device procedure just… opene...
Second-Order Thinking: How to Stop Your Decisions From Creating Bigger Problems
In August 2025, Polish researchers tested something nobody had thought to check: what happens to doctors' skills after they rely on AI assistance? The...
Second-Order Thinking: How to Stop Your Decisions From Creating Bigger Problems (Thinking 101 - Ep 6)
In August 2025, Polish researchers tested something nobody had thought to check: what happens to doctors' skills after they rely on AI assistance? The...
How To Make Better Decisions When Nothing Is Certain
You're frozen. The deadline's approaching. You don't have all the data. Everyone wants certainty. You can't give it. Sound familiar? Maybe it's a hiri...
Make Better Decisions When Nothing is Certain
You're frozen. The deadline's approaching. You don't have all the data. Everyone wants certainty. You can't give it. Sound familiar?
Maybe it's...
You Think in Analogies Every Day (And You’re Doing It Wrong)
Try to go through a day without using an analogy. I guarantee you'll fail within an hour. Your morning coffee tastes like yesterday's batch. Traffic i...
You Think In Analogies and You Are Doing It Wrong
Try to go through a day without using an analogy. I guarantee you'll fail within an hour. Your morning coffee tastes like yesterday's batch. Traffic i...
How To Master Causal Thinking
$37 billion. That's how much gets wasted annually on marketing budgets because of poor attribution and misunderstanding of what actually drives result...
How To Master Causal Thinking
$37 billion. That's how much gets wasted annually on marketing budgets because of poor attribution and misunderstanding of what actually drives result...
How To Improve Your Logical Reasoning Skills
You see a headline: “Study Shows Coffee Drinkers Live Longer.” You share it in 3 seconds flat. But here's what just happened—you confused correlation...
How to Improve Logical Reasoning Skills
You see a headline: "Study Shows Coffee Drinkers Live Longer." You share it in 3 seconds flat. But here's what just happened—you confused correlation...
Why Thinking Skills Matter Now More Than Ever
The Crisis We're Not Talking About We're living through the greatest thinking crisis in human history—and most people don't even realize it's happenin...
Why Thinking Skills Matter More Than Ever
We're living through the greatest thinking crisis in human history—and most people don't even realize it's happening.
Right now, AI generates yo...
How to Build Innovation Thinking Skills Through Daily Journaling
Most innovation leaders are performing someone else's version of innovation thinking. I've spent decades in this field. Worked with Fortune 100 compan...
How to Build Innovation Skills Through Daily Journaling
Most innovation leaders are performing someone else's version of innovation thinking.
I've spent decades in this field. Worked with Fortune 100...
The WSJ Got Quarterly Reporting Wrong
Michael Dell and his investors spent twenty-five billion dollars to buy back Dell Technologies. But they weren't really buying a company. They were bu...
The WSJ Got Quarterly Reporting Wrong
Michael Dell and his investors spent twenty-five billion dollars to buy back Dell Technologies. But they weren't really buying a company. They were bu...