5 Minutes To New Ideas With Phil McKinney

The Overlooked Secret to Innovation

August 10, 2020 07:00 - 4 minutes - 6.8 MB

As a society, we have a problem. Some years ago, the late Nobel Prize winner Dr. Albert Schweitzer was asked by a reporter, “Doctor, what’s wrong with people today?” The famous doctor was silent for a moment, then he said, “People simply don’t think!” Why do some not use our brains and think? The brain is a fabulous mechanism. It is capable of processing eight hundred inputs per second for seventy-five years without exhausting itself. Scientists tell us that humans use app...

TNI-Affordance

July 13, 2020 07:00 - 6 minutes - 9.56 MB

On January 13, 2018, the people of Hawaii woke to a shocking alert on their phones and TVs. An incoming ballistic missile was on its way and that the warning was not a drill. It was 38 minutes later that the alert was retracted. During those 38 minutes -- panic set in. People were trying to figure out what to do. People drove their families to highway tunnels in hopes it would protect them. We can only imagine the fear that raced through the population of more than a million people. How...

TNI - Exceptionally Normal

January 09, 2020 08:00 - 6 minutes - 9.09 MB

It is normal that no two people are exactly alike. Not even twins. So the word normal should not be confused with the word average. If you leave your fingerprints on something, you might as well leave your name and address since no two people have the same prints. You hear music and see a sunrise differently from any other person. You might enjoy a movie that your spouse would do anything to avoid. You might like being in a crowd of friends while your spouse prefers an evening being just ...

Great Leaders Keep Cool Under Fire

December 12, 2019 08:00 - 5 minutes - 7.88 MB

My grandfather had an old saying when I was growing up, “Never burn a bridge." At the time, I thought it was a strange saying. It was only later that I realized what he was saying. No matter how someone treats you, don't get angry and never retaliate as to destroy the relationship. Great leaders keep cool even when the attacker is making it personal. Leaders Keep Cool Under Stress The president of a large corporation was confronted by an employee who stormed into his office and said, “I ...

Find A Way To Say 'Yes' To Non-Obvious Ideas

September 12, 2019 07:00 - 6 minutes - 8.68 MB

The world is made up of ‘yes’ people and ‘no’ people. We need more optimistic -- more hopeful people who find a way to say yes to non-obvious ideas. During Thomas Jefferson's presidency in the early 1800’s, he and a group of travelers were crossing a river that had overflowed its banks. Each man crossed on horseback fighting for his life. A lone traveler watched the group traverse the treacherous river and then asked President Jefferson to take him across. The president agreed without hesi...

Avoiding the Habit Trap

July 04, 2019 07:00 - 6 minutes - 8.7 MB

When I was growing up, one time my grandmother baked a fantastic German Chocolate cake. I can see it now -- that moist chocolate cake and rich icing. It was great and everyone in the family let her know how great it was. We devoured the cake. But from that time on, we could count on a German Chocolate cake as THE dessert every time we would visit. It became a little boring. Needless to say, I never told her that. Everyone wants and needs change. But on the other hand, we enjoy doing what ...

Innovation Attitude is Innovation Success

June 27, 2019 07:00 - 6 minutes - 8.77 MB

I find it interesting that we usually get from other people exactly what we expect of them. If we are looking for friendship, we will likely receive it. If our attitude is that of indifference, we will get indifference. And if we are looking for a fight, we will in all likelihood find ourselves in the middle of a fight. The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude has on me. When it comes to success, attitude is more important than what happened in the past, more than yo...

Innovation Requires Getting the Facts Right

June 20, 2019 07:00 - 5 minutes - 8.14 MB

There is an old saying that goes something like this, “Speaking with passion but without the facts is like making a beautiful dive into an empty pool.” As John Adam’s famously said, “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” To convince or persuade others to support your idea, you have to base your idea on incontestable facts that are readily grasped and understood. ...

Change Caused by Innovation

June 13, 2019 07:00 - 5 minutes - 7.74 MB

As a result of some digital spring cleaning I was doing, I found and was listening to old shows from 2005 - the first year of my podcast. Honestly, given what I know now, I wish could have re-written and re-recorded them. The technology and tools now available to podcasters are far superior to what we had back in those early days. This got me to thinking about how wonderful innovation is and how easy is for us to overlook it. Fifty years ago, we lived in a way that would be considered a ...

Innovation Quality is a Virtue

June 06, 2019 07:00 - 5 minutes - 8.32 MB

I was looking through some of my old idea notebooks and came across a quote that I wrote down. It is one of those quotes that cause you to pause and contemplate. To question your own personal motivations. The quote? “Institutions, like vineyards, should be judged by the quality of their vintages.” Its worth think about, isn’t it? “Institutions, like vineyards, should be judged by the quality of their vintages.” An institutions impact should be measured over time just as it takes years ...

Ageism and Innovation

May 30, 2019 07:00 - 6 minutes - 8.72 MB

Some have put forth what I believe is a false premise -- that creativity and innovation are for the young. Silicon Valley has clearly bought into this premise. If you are over 40, some could rightly argue 35, many of the companies in the valley have taken the position that you are over the hill. The average age of an employee at leading Silicon Valley companies like Facebook is 28 while Google is 30. My former employer, HP looks like a retirement home with the average age of its employ...

Innovation Communities

May 23, 2019 07:00 - 6 minutes - 9.27 MB

I’m not sure who said it first but I’ll give credit to Tony Robbins for the now famous quote -- “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with” With a slight tweak, you can apply this quote to networks, communities, tribes, and friends you socialize with. If you changed that quote to be … “You are the average of the five social networks where you spend the most time” What would that say about you? Remember that it’s the average. Based on the networks and their com...

Time Management

May 16, 2019 07:00 - 6 minutes - 8.48 MB

As it says in Psalm 90:10, we are allotted threescore and ten years to do with as we please. Of that, we will spend the equivalent of twenty-three years and four months of it asleep. We will work nineteen years eight months practicing our religion and ten years and two months in recreation. We will spend six years and ten months -- eating and drinking. Six years will be spent traveling. Four years are spent in illness. Time is one of those resources that we never seem to have enough of. It...

So Your Idea Was Rejected

May 09, 2019 07:00 - 6 minutes - 9.68 MB

Your idea was rejected. Criticized. Dumped on. You were told to give up. I have yet to find anyone who likes to have their ideas rejected. But if you want to succeed in innovation, you have to put yourself and your ideas out there which means you will get rejected. You have no other choice. The alternative is to avoid rejection and criticism which translates into 100% chance that your idea will never become a reality. To set the proper expectation, your ideas will be rejected far more ti...

Innovating Using The Daffodil Principal

May 02, 2019 07:00 - 6 minutes - 8.63 MB

Want to know the secret to take ideas and make them real innovations? It is what I call the “daffodil principle” which I learned/stole from an article published by Jaroldeen Edwards. In one of the small mountain communities in the Sierra foothills, there is a church. If you take the time to pull off the road and walk around the side of the church, you will see a hand-lettered sign pointing to the "Daffodil Garden." A quick walk down the path and you will see the most unbelievable sight. ...

Everything I Learned About Ethics I learned in Boy Scouts

April 18, 2019 07:00 - 6 minutes - 9.16 MB

Twelve words. Millions of 11-year-old boys, and now young girls, learn it when they join Boy Scouts. It was something that I had to memorize in order to earn my first step along the way to my Eagle Scout medal. Each weekly meeting started with everyone saying them aloud. We were expected to follow them at all times. When a person achieves Eagle, they stand in front of people attending their Court of Honor and recite them and committing to continuing to follow them. This could sound like ...

What is Your Creative Inspiration?

April 11, 2019 07:00 - 6 minutes - 8.91 MB

I really enjoy getting behind this microphone. It is my personal creative outlet that is separate from the day job. What was it that got me to start back in 2005? Like all things, I got inspired. My inspiration was when my mentor, Bob Davis, lent me my first self-help set of cassette tapes created by Earl Nightingale. If you are not familiar with Earl Nightingale, he produced a spoken word record, The Strangest Secret, which sold more than a million copies, making it the first spoken-word...

Should You Use A Data Driven Approach

April 04, 2019 07:00 - 6 minutes - 8.66 MB

The inspiration for innovation takes all forms. For some its music. For others its art. And for others its data. When I was CTO, Mark Hurd, the CEO at HP at the time, had a quote that was ingrained into everything the executive team did. “If you stare at the numbers long enough, they will eventually confess.” Mark Hurd The expectation was that as an executive you knew “your numbers”. It was not unusual to have Mark stop me in the hall and ask about the R&D investment levels last quar...

What They Could Become

March 28, 2019 07:00 - 6 minutes - 8.63 MB

Great leaders - in business, government or society, know that when it comes to others, there is always more than meets the eye. Earl Nightingale once shared a story that reminds us to look beyond what we think is obvious. It seems that the NBC orchestra was about to be formed, David Sarnoff, chairman of the board of NBC, gave one directive: “Do not hire away any players from existing orchestras.” The people in charge managed to put together a superb orchestra -- all except for the first ...

Just Do It!

March 21, 2019 07:00 - 6 minutes - 8.79 MB

Any writer, syndicated cartoonist, innovator or perhaps a podcast host; sooner or later will run into what some would call writers' block. They find themselves drawing a blank. They have a deadline rapidly approaching and they find themselves with nothing -- not a single good idea. Writers Block It has happened to me more times that I would care to admit. I have a show script that needs writing and I find myself looking at my laptop with nothing. I go for a walk. I read my emails. I ...

Be Brave To Innovate

March 11, 2019 05:00 - 6 minutes - 8.7 MB

Did you know the opposite of bravery is not cowardice? The opposite of bravery is conformity. Doing everything the same way that everybody else does it, being like everybody else, thinking the same way everybody else does. Conformity is the “safe” approach which actually puts us at more risk. It takes bravery to step out and leave the warm space of conformity — and try something new. Let’s be honest, conformity is comfortable. You know what to expect. You conform to the norms of an office....

Innovate with Fresh Eyes

March 04, 2019 06:00 - 6 minutes - 8.5 MB

I’ve been in the innovation game for more than 30 years. Hard to believe. With that many years comes loads of experience but also some downsides. As with most things, when you’ve done something for a long time, you tend to fall into a pattern - a rut. You use your experience to recognize a pattern and then immediately apply the answer that worked the last time. That works great in many situations but can create major blind spots when it comes to innovation. Stuck In A Rut How many of...

What Products Could I Create Out of Unused Assets

November 05, 2018 06:00 - 6 minutes - 9.45 MB

I’m an innovation guy. It may not say so on my business card, but that’s what I do. I encourage people, whether inside HP or in my meetings with customers around the world, to accept that they and their product are going to have to change. No matter how popular and successful your work is, things change. The economy shifts; your customers’ needs evolve; technologies become redundant. We’ve talked about this in earlier chapters, but looking forward, preparing for th...

What product or service to stay ahead

October 22, 2018 05:00 - 7 minutes - 9.89 MB

On October 4, 1957, Russia launched a beach-ball-sized satellite named Sputnik, which orbited the Earth in just over ninety-six minutes. The previous frontrunner in the space race, the United States, was now the runner up. Our only competitor had trounced us, seemingly out of nowhere. A month later the Russians sent up Laika, a small stray terrier collected from the streets of Moscow, in Sputnik II. The dog became the first living creature sent into space, and an instant celebrity back on Ea...

Who is passionate about my product

October 15, 2018 05:00 - 6 minutes - 9.34 MB

I’ve never shopped at the online craft marketplace Etsy.com or even any of its competitors. Not an area of interest for me as I’m not often in the market for hand-knitted iPod cozies, customized guitar cables, or the like. As for my wife and daughters – they are big fans and very loyal and passionate users. And they are not alone. Since 2005 Etsy.com has signed up 2 million merchants and 35 million users. Their annual sales figures in 2017 were $3.2 BILLION. Even more inter...

What is surprisingly inconvenient about my product

October 08, 2018 05:00 - 6 minutes - 9.56 MB

What is surprisingly inconvenient about my product? The designers and engineers who work at HP face many challenges in getting their ideas signed off on. It’s a long process from an idea to a finished prototype. Before any product can hit the market, it faces one final test. I take the prototype home, give it to my wife, and say, “Tell me what you think.” Now, my wife is an extremely smart and focused individual, but she is emphatically not a techie. She doesn’...

How Can My Product Change in 5 Years

October 01, 2018 05:00 - 6 minutes - 8.93 MB

Do you sell atoms or bytes? Do you think that your answer could change over the next five years? Think about Amazon and the Kindle. Jeff Bezos asked, What is my role going to be if the nature of books changes? He realized that to stay relevant and necessary his company needed to retain control over something tangible and physical. There could have been other options. Amazon could have bet that the reading experience would fully transition to audio, but initially they ult...

Where do we perform research and development

September 17, 2018 05:00 - 8 minutes - 12.1 MB

Where do we perform product research and development? Where else could this be done? What is your organization’s philosophy about design and development? Do you keep everything in-house, or do you outsource as needed? There are two schools of thoughts on this. By keeping the design process in-house, a company can build a sense of continuity and cohesion that links the entire family of products together in a satisfying way. Or you can outsource as needed, hiring talent fo...

In What Order Do You Do the R and D Process

September 10, 2018 05:00 - 6 minutes - 8.7 MB

In the traditional R&D process, the product is developed and then handed off to the design team to “wrap” it and make it look pretty. The drawback is that this approach is out of date; in the last ten years consumers have become much more design-savvy. Consumers want functional, usable design that highlights ease of use, or a more emotive design that adds a personal connection with the product or in some way broadcasts a statement about the user’s more subtle, hard-to-define beli...

What emotional psychological or status benefit could people derive from my product

September 03, 2018 05:00 - 7 minutes - 10.9 MB

What emotional, psychological, or status benefits could people derive from using my product? Do you have diamonds stashed away that you reckon you can sell if times ever get tough? Say, a family heirloom, or an engagement ring from a failed marriage? Perhaps you know how much the diamond was appraised for by a reputable seller and feel confident that you can get a reasonable return on your investment. If so, you’re in for a disappointing surprise. In the late 1880s, a group ...

What is the process used by my customer to discover my product

August 27, 2018 05:00 - 6 minutes - 9.51 MB

Do you have a digital twin? The concept first formed on consumer sites like Yelp, but it’s becoming a catchphrase in marketing and sales. The idea is that dedicated users of sites like Yelp eventually notice that there are other users whose tastes, interests, and “favorites” match their own. These digital twins do not “know” each other in the traditional way. They most likely never communicate directly with each other, but a link forms as one person realizes that the other seems ...

Who am I not selling to because I think they can’t or won’t pay for my product?

August 13, 2018 05:00 - 6 minutes - 9.62 MB

Who am I not selling to because I think they can’t or won’t pay for my product? Price is king, right? “Build ’em cheap and stack ’em high” is practically the motto of most segments of the tech industry Naturally, there are some notable exceptions for companies producing exclusive high priced products. It’s certainly a core assumption about what the majority of customers want. For example, $320 is a huge sum of money for a middle- or lower-class Indian family, but it didn’t stopped ...

What are your unshakable beliefs about what your customers want

August 06, 2018 05:00 - 6 minutes - 9.08 MB

One thing is to know what your customers want to do, another is to understand how they intend to get it done. It’s easy to look at their goals and tell yourself that your product will match their needs. However, if you don’t understand their internal philosophy about what they are doing and why they are doing it, you may find that they consider your product a complete failure. Competing companies can have the same goals but radically different strategies about how to achieve them. ...

What are the criteria to select research and development projects

July 30, 2018 05:00 - 4 minutes - 6.55 MB

What are your criteria for deciding that an idea is worth pursuing? We all have our own set of selection criteria, the first of which is usually looking for profits. However, selecting a course of action based solely on ROI can be limiting. If you are doing something really innovative, how on earth can you determine what the margins will be at an early stage of the product? The problem is, if you filter out new ideas based solely on whether they meet your financial projections, then you’...

What are we throwing away because we assume it has no value

July 23, 2018 05:00 - 6 minutes - 9.26 MB

My wife is famous for being a little frugal. She once routed me and our son Logan from Las Vegas to Phoenix to Los Angeles and finally to San Jose because she could save twenty bucks each over the nonstop fare. Kind of nuts, right? But if I’m honest I have the same mind-set in one respect: I am determined to squeeze everything I can out of any idea or opportunity that is available to me. I am diligent about looking at information and ideas that supposedly have “no value” and wonderi...

Could I create a standardized offering of a custom product

July 16, 2018 05:00 - 6 minutes - 9.62 MB

One of the first products I created as a software developer was a touch-typing program called Typing Instructor . This was back in 1985, and at that time there was no such thing as a standard PC. Instead you owned a specific brand and had access to the programs that had been written specifically for that make, whether IBM, Wang, or DEC. Each of these companies was attempting to create lock-in for their third-party software developers. If a user wanted a specific application, they ne...

Who complains about my product

July 09, 2018 05:00 - 5 minutes - 7.71 MB

A few years ago, a passenger complaint letter to Virgin Atlantic circulated around the web. It was very long, fully illustrated with photos, clearly somewhat tongue-in-cheek, and very funny, but it made a few good points about the bad food and surly service this particular passenger had experienced. Almost three years later it still occasionally shows up as one of the most-read stories at telegraph.co.uk. In 2009, another disgruntled passenger created a music video about how United bag...

What input, if reduced, would allow me to cut the price by 25 percent

July 02, 2018 05:00 - 5 minutes - 8.16 MB

There is a reason that the percentage in this question is as high as it is. Sure, it would sound less scary and more reasonable if I asked you how you could cut your price by 5 percent, or maybe 8 percent, but that would be missing the point. If you want potentially game-changing moves to get ahead of your competition, you need to make big savings and do something bold to get to that leader-of-the-pack position. The best place to find these kinds of savings is in your bigg...

Who do I not want to use my product now, but may want to in the future

June 25, 2018 05:00 - 6 minutes - 9.42 MB

We tend to assume that any customer is a good customer. However, if you find that you’re working like crazy and have a solid and reliable customer base, but you’re still not making the profits you expected, then ask the Killer Question, Who do I not want to use my product? Do you remember back when dial-up Internet service first started to transition to the mainstream? In the early ’90s companies like AOL, CompuServe, and EarthLink began offering access to the web that was b...

Who is using my product in a way I never intended and how

June 18, 2018 05:00 - 7 minutes - 10.4 MB

Once a product has sold, it’s pretty much out of your control. You may have an idea why people will buy it, and what they’ll do with it, but the most you can ever do is guess. So why are you assuming that you know what your customer actually likes and values about your product, and how they use it solve a problem they have? One of my favorite blogs to read when I have downtime is Ikeahackers.net. Ikeahackers is just what it sounds like—a place where people can sho...

Can I recombine existing components to create new products for customers I don’t currently serve?

June 11, 2018 05:00 - 4 minutes - 7 MB

Magazine publishers are in the same predicament as the book-publishing and recording industries before it. How do you keep your customers believing that your content is worth paying for when there is endless free content available on the Internet? Some fashion magazines are experimenting with making their print issues feel like “must-buy” items; Bazaar and Elle both offer subscriber-only covers with edgier photography. Others, like the British style magazine i-D, routinely print mag...

Can I create an on-demand version of the product?

June 04, 2018 05:00 - 5 minutes - 7.92 MB

Do you need to have a finished product in order to make a sale? Is there any way that not offering a finished product would actually give you an advantage, or even become a selling point? My children have long since outgrown toys, but my grandkids have more than once roped into visits to Build-A-Bear. Build-A-Bear, like the paint-your-own pottery craze that preceded it, doesn’t offer a finished product. In fact, the whole selling point is that you create your own customized product i...

What will future customers’ buying criteria be

May 28, 2018 05:00 - 5 minutes - 7.72 MB

A big part of any business is being aware of, and responding to, the life cycles of the industry and its customers. Some of these are easy to see; you only need a cursory understanding of the effect of OPEC on gas prices in the early ’70s to understand why cars became more fuel efficient in that decade. Other reasons are harder to see. Some criteria can be “faddish,” based on things such as color or brand. Others are based on external influences. For years the cell-phone industry f...

Who will not buy my product because they feel something is objectionable about it

May 21, 2018 05:00 - 4 minutes - 6.43 MB

Have you ever purchased a product that others hated? Or what about the opposite .. .have you ever seen others using a product or service that you absolutely despised? The flipside to any positive emotional connection is a negative one. If you are producing a product or service that is inspiring enough that some people love what you are doing --- odds are there are others will actually dislike your product with an equal passion.

What Industries Are Analogous To Ours

May 13, 2018 05:00 - 5 minutes - 7.52 MB

No matter what business we are in, we are all fighting essentially the same fight—designing a product that a customer will prefer over that of our competitor. To do this, we need to constantly be aware of how our business environment is evolving, how our customers are changing, and what we need to modify in order to keep our product relevant and desirable.

How Can I Take Advantage Of Emerging Trends And Fads

April 22, 2018 05:00 - 7 minutes - 10.5 MB

“Weak signals” are the equivalent of a canary in a coal mine. They are the unspoken needs and wants of your customers, and they are also the arrows pointing to what your customers are going to need and want in the future.

What Customer Segments Will Emerge In 5 Years

April 08, 2018 05:00 - 6 minutes - 9.28 MB

With any radical idea you will see the corporate antibodies come out of the woodwork, giving all the standard reasons why the idea will “never happen.” Remember, the fundamental assumption of the corporate antibody is that the future will be the same as today. Your customers are going to change. It’s that simple. Don’t let others’ hesitation keep you from pursuing the changes you and your company will need to make to be ready for the unavoidable changes in your customer.

5 Minutes To New Ideas With Phil McKinney

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