Episodes

  • How to Get Smarter by Arguing with People who Disagree with You

    How to Get Smarter by Arguing with People who Disagree with You
    Sep 16 2025
    What if I told you that the people who disagree with you are actually your secret weapon for better thinking? Just last month, my wife and I had a heated argument about studio changes I wanted to make here on the ranch. Her immediate reaction was about cost. Mine was about productivity and creativity. We were talking past each other completely. But when I applied what I'm about to teach you, we discovered we were both right—and found a solution that addressed both concerns without compromising either. What started as an argument became a session where each of us was heard and understood. Sounds crazy, right? By the end of this video, you'll not only believe it—you'll have experienced it yourself. Think of someone you disagree with about something important. Got them in mind? Good. In 25 minutes, you'll see that person as your thinking partner. You know that sinking feeling when a simple conversation with someone turns into a heated argument? You walk away thinking, "How did that go so wrong?" The problem isn't the disagreement itself—it's that most people never learned how to use disagreement to think better. We encounter difficult disagreements almost daily. Your spouse questions your spending. Your boss pushes back on your proposal. Your friend challenges your weekend plans. Each disagreement is an opportunity for your thinking to become sharper. When you approach it right, others often think more clearly too. Your Brain Gets Smarter Under Pressure During solo thinking, you operate in your thinking "comfort zone". Familiar patterns feel safe. Trusted sources get your attention. Comfortable assumptions go unchallenged. It's efficient, but it also limits intellectual growth. In our Critical Thinking Skills episode—our most popular video—we taught you to question assumptions, check evidence, apply logic, ask good questions. If you haven't watched that episode, pause this and watch that first—it's the foundation for what comes next. What we didn't tell you in that video is that intelligent opposition makes these skills far more powerful than solo practice ever could. Let me show you what I mean. Take any belief you hold strongly. Now imagine defending it to someone smart who disagrees with you. Notice what happens in your mind: You suddenly need better evidence than "I read somewhere..."Your own assumptions come under sharper scrutinyLogic becomes more rigorous under pressureQuestions get sharper to understand their position That mental shift happened because I introduced opposition. Your brain got more demanding of itself. And when you engage thoughtfully, something interesting happens—the other person thinks more carefully too. Think of it like physical exercise. Muscles strengthen through resistance, not relaxation. Your thinking muscles work the same way. Intellectual resistance—smart disagreement—strengthens your reasoning, your evidence gathering is more thorough, and your conclusions are more robust. This is where things fall apart for most people. The Critical Mistake That Kills Thinking Most people will never learn this because they're too busy being right. They miss the thinking benefits because they fail at disagreement basics. They get defensive. They shut down. Conversations become battles. Someone challenges their ideas, fight-or-flight kicks in. Instead of seeing an opportunity for better thinking, they see a threat. Imagine your boss questioning your budget request in a meeting. Your heart rate spikes. Your face flushes. You start defending instead of listening. Twenty minutes later, you've missed valuable insights about organizational priorities, they've tuned out your reasoning, and maybe both of you damaged a key relationship. Look, this makes total sense. Your brain can't tell the difference between a saber-toothed tiger and someone attacking your political views. The same threat response kicks in. When you get defensive, it often triggers defensiveness in others because they interpret your reaction as confirmation that this is a fight, not a discussion. Once this happens, thinking improvement stops immediately. Your emotional brain takes over. Pure survival mode. No learning happens. No growth occurs. The chance for better thinking vanishes. The solution? Learn how to keep disagreements constructive instead of destructive. How To Make Disagreements Constructive The difference between a constructive disagreement and a destructive argument isn't the topic—it's how you handle the interpersonal dynamics. These four skills transform how you approach disagreement and create conditions where others are more likely to think clearly, too. When you use these skills, something remarkable happens: you stay open and curious instead of defensive and closed. When others see you thinking clearly under pressure, they're more likely to follow suit. Think of these as the basic requirements for constructive disagreement. Miss any one of them, and even the best critical thinking ...
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    39 mins
  • How to See Opportunities Others Miss

    How to See Opportunities Others Miss
    Sep 9 2025
    In 2005, I had a ten-minute conversation at San Jose Airport that generated billions in revenue for HP. But here's what's fascinating: three other HP executives heard the exact same conversation and saw nothing special about it. If you read Monday's Studio Notes, you know this story from the emotional side—what it felt like to have that breakthrough moment, the internal resistance I faced, the personal transformation that followed. Today I'm delivering on my promise to give you the complete tactical methodology behind that insight. I'm going to show you the systematic framework I call high-resolution thinking—and how you can train yourself to see opportunities that others miss entirely. By the end of this episode, you'll understand the three-stage system that turns casual conversations into breakthrough innovations, you'll have nine specific methods you can practice, and you'll walk away with a week-long exercise you can start immediately. Here's what I want you to do right now: think of one conversation you had this week where someone mentioned a frustration, a side project, or something they wished existed. Hold that in your mind—we're going to transform how you process that kind of information. Credibility and Results But first, let me establish why this matters. That airport conversation led to HP's acquisition of VooDoo PC, the creation of HP's gaming business unit, and HP's rise to number one gaming PC market share—a position we held for years. The HP Blackbird that resulted earned PC Gamer's highest score ever awarded and a 9.3 from CNET. More importantly, I've used this same methodology to identify breakthrough opportunities across multiple Fortune 100 companies over the past two decades. The framework is repeatable, teachable, and it works. The difference between breakthrough innovators and everyone else isn't intelligence or access to information. It's thinking resolution—the cognitive ability to process multiple layers of information simultaneously while others get stuck examining only the surface. The Problem But before we dive into the framework, let me show you why this has become absolutely critical. We're living through what I call a "thinking recession." Despite having access to more information than ever before, our cognitive resolution is actually decreasing. Here's a startling statistic: the average executive processes over 34 GB of information daily, but misses 73% of the strategic signals embedded in that data. We're drowning in information while starving for insight. Watch any leadership meeting and you'll see the symptoms: binary thinking applied to complex situations, focus on symptoms instead of root causes, poor synthesis of multiple data streams, and over-reliance on frameworks that miss critical edge cases. Pause here and ask yourself: How many potential opportunities did you miss last week simply because you processed them as routine information instead of strategic signals? Consider Kodak—a company that literally invented the first digital camera, owned the patents, and dominated the market. They processed digital photography in low resolution, seeing it as a threat to film rather than recognizing how convenience, quality improvements, and social sharing behaviors would converge to create an entirely new market. Meanwhile, Instagram—a company that didn't even exist yet—was destined to process the same signals with enhanced clarity. They understood that digital photography wasn't about replacing film. It was about transforming social connection through visual storytelling. This pattern repeats constantly, and the stakes keep getting higher. The HP Story Let me show you exactly how high-resolution thinking worked in that airport conversation. I was traveling to San Diego with three other HP executives to visit a defense contractor. Standard business trip. But instead of small talk, I asked the HP engineer traveling with us about his side project. After some prodding, he described a PC he'd built with "off the charts performance." He'd been sneaking parts from the parts bin, sneaking motherboard customizations into production runs, conducting unauthorized R&D on his own time. Here's where thinking resolution made the difference: Standard Resolution Capture: "HP engineer built fast PC" High-Resolution Capture: Internal stealth project + upcoming defense contractor insights + performance optimization + unauthorized innovation driven by market demand Standard Resolution Processing: "Fast PC = gaming opportunity" High-Resolution Processing: Multiple pattern vectors converging—computing power trajectory hitting gaming demand trajectory, defense-grade performance concepts moving toward consumer markets, enthusiast communities forming through internet connections Standard Resolution Compression: "Let's build gaming PCs" High-Resolution Compression: Acquire existing excellence rather than build from scratch, preserve innovation culture while scaling distribution, ...
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    39 mins
  • 5 Questions That Can Spot Breakthrough Innovations Before They Happen

    5 Questions That Can Spot Breakthrough Innovations Before They Happen
    Sep 2 2025
    In October 1903, The New York Times published an editorial mocking the idea of human flight, stating that a successful flying machine might take "from one to ten million years" to develop through the efforts of mathematicians and engineers. Eight weeks later, on December 17, 1903, the Wright brothers achieved the first powered, controlled flight over the beaches of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, proving the skeptics wrong. The smartest people in the world got this catastrophically wrong. What does that tell us about impossibility itself? Every industry has billion-dollar opportunities hiding behind a single word: impossible. And most executives never see them coming because they've been trained to accept limitations that don't actually exist. The Innovation Reality Check If the smartest experts can be so wrong about something as fundamental as human flight, then we need to completely rethink how we evaluate impossibility. The problem isn't that impossible things become possible. The problem is that we're terrible at recognizing what's actually impossible versus what just looks impossible. What Innovation Actually Means Innovation is simply an idea made real. Not brilliant concepts sitting in notebooks. Actual stuff you can touch. Use. Buy. Experience. Leonardo da Vinci invented flying machines in the 15th century. The Wright brothers innovated flight in 1903. What's the difference? Da Vinci had amazing ideas that stayed ideas. The Wright brothers made the idea real. This distinction changes everything about impossible innovation. Has someone successfully transformed an "impossible" idea into a tangible reality? Then logically, it was never truly impossible. We just lacked the knowledge, tools, or perspective to make it happen. Those dismissed breakthroughs floating around your industry right now? They aren't abstract fantasies. They're concrete challenges waiting for someone to develop the right knowledge, tools, and perspective. The Three Types of Impossibility Not all impossibilities are created equal. Three distinct categories: Logical Impossibility: Things that contradict themselves by definition. Married bachelors. Square circles. But even these sometimes dissolve when we reframe the question. Negative numbers? Logically impossible for centuries. Until merchants needed to describe debt, scientists needed to measure temperatures below freezing. Suddenly, those "impossible" numbers became essential tools. Physical Impossibility: Things that appear to violate natural laws. Quantum mechanics would've been physically impossible under 19th-century physics. Today, we're building quantum computers using those "impossible" principles. Practical Impossibility: Ideas that don't violate logic or physics—they're just beyond our current capabilities. Commercial fusion power. Artificial general intelligence. Reversing human aging. Most breakthrough innovations emerge from this third category. They represent temporary constraints. Not permanent barriers. Here's what nobody talks about: the companies that get blindsided by "impossible" innovations aren't stupid. They're victims of expertise. The more you know about an industry, the harder it becomes to see past its false limitations. Everyone says innovation requires thinking outside the box. That's backwards. The biggest breakthroughs come from questioning the box itself. Not thinking outside your industry's limitations—questioning whether those limitations are real. When I took over as CTO at HP, our PC division was hemorrhaging money. Three to five billion dollars a year in losses. Dead last in market share. Everyone inside the company believed there was no room to innovate in PCs. Too commoditized. Too mature. Impossible to differentiate. That belief? Complete nonsense. We took that division from massive losses to five billion in profits. From last place to number one global market share. How? By introducing innovations that everyone else in the industry said were impossible. Missing these patterns doesn't just cost market share. It costs entire business models. I've watched billion-dollar companies become footnotes because they couldn't see past their own expertise. The tools I'm sharing today came from that experience. And dozens of others like it. But what if I told you there's a way to cut through all this industry BS in less than five minutes? What if claims about what can't be done could be systematically dismantled with just the right questions? The Five-Question Reality Check These questions cut through industry BS faster than anything else I've seen. They force you to get specific about dismissive claims instead of accepting them at face value. They separate real barriers from fake ones. The Framework That Changes Everything When the industry consensus calls something a fantasy, don't dismiss it automatically. Run it through the Reality Check. Question 1: What makes this seem undoable specifically? Don't accept vague claims. Push for precise ...
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    30 mins
  • I Evaluated over 30000 Innovation Ideas at HP

    I Evaluated over 30000 Innovation Ideas at HP
    Aug 26 2025
    Your best innovation ideas aren't losing to bad ideas – they're losing to exhaustion. I know that sounds counterintuitive. After 30 years of making billion-dollar innovation decisions at HP and CableLabs, I thought I understood why good ideas failed. Market timing. Technical challenges. Resource constraints. Sometimes that was the case … but most of the time, I was wrong. We've created an innovation economy that's too innovative to innovate. And if you're wondering why your breakthrough ideas keep getting ignored, dismissed, or tabled "for later review," this video will show you the real reason. I'm going to reveal why even brilliant ideas are dying from attention scarcity, not their merit. And why this crisis will determine which companies dominate the next decade. Monday, I shared the complete story in my Studio Notes newsletter about how I first discovered this crisis at HP. For a comprehensive analysis and its implications for your company, please visit the link below. In this episode, I will share with you a practical framework for recognizing and addressing this problem within your organization. The Innovation Overload Problem Let's start with the math that's breaking everyone's brain. Every C-suite leader I know is evaluating 40+ innovation proposals monthly. That's what they tell me when I ask why good ideas are getting ignored—two per business day, every day, without break. However, what's happening psychologically is that decision-makers are developing reflexive skepticism toward all innovation claims as a survival mechanism. It's not cynicism – it's cognitive self-defense against proposal overload. In conversations with dozens of executives over the past year, nearly three-quarters tell me "innovation fatigue" has become their top decision challenge. Think about that. The problem isn't a lack of innovation. The problem is too much innovation. Good ideas are dying not from merit evaluation but from attention competition. We've created an innovation economy where the sheer volume of innovation prevents genuine innovation from emerging. And here's the irony – I'm using the same overloaded language that's part of the problem. When every idea is described as “revolutionary”, the words lose all meaning. Last month alone, I was pitched 23 "revolutionary" AI solutions. Most were solid ideas with real potential. But none got the attention they deserved because my brain had already tagged them as "more innovation noise" before I could properly evaluate their merit. And that's when it hit me: if someone whose job is literally to analyze innovation decisions can't focus properly, what chance do overwhelmed executives have? The cruel mathematics are simple: breakthrough ideas need deep consideration, but executives only have bandwidth for surface-level evaluation. Let me show you exactly how this plays out in the real world. Case Study: HP's Innovation Program Office I first discovered this crisis when I was running HP's Innovation Program Office – what we called the IPO. The IPO was HP's dedicated engine for identifying, incubating, and launching breakthrough technologies that would become the company's future growth drivers. We had frameworks, funding, and brilliant people. Harvard and Stanford now teach case studies about the HP IPO and our process design. But here's what those case studies miss entirely: we were drowning. The HP Innovation Program Office received more than 3,000 ideas and pitches every year. Think about that number. That's nearly 60 new innovation opportunities hitting our desk every week. Each claiming to be a breakthrough. Each demanding evaluation. Each potentially containing the next billion-dollar opportunity for HP. No team – no matter how smart, no matter how well-resourced – can properly evaluate 3,000 innovation ideas annually. The mathematics are impossible. Fatigue became our constant battle. We would clear 50 proposals in one week, only to find 65 new ones waiting the next. It felt like trying to empty an ocean with a bucket. We built sophisticated tools. We created evaluation frameworks. We hired brilliant people and trained them extensively. But underneath all our sophisticated processes was a gnawing feeling that haunted every decision: somewhere in those 3,000 ideas were genuine breakthroughs that we weren't giving proper attention. I remember one particularly brutal month when we evaluated around 250 innovation pitches. By week three, I caught myself skimming proposals that deserved hours of consideration. By week four, I was unconsciously looking for reasons to say no rather than reasons to say yes. That's when I realized the system had broken me. And if it could break someone whose job was literally to find breakthrough innovation, it was breaking everyone. The most painful part? Years later, I would occasionally encounter innovations in the market that looked suspiciously familiar. Ideas that had been buried in our pipeline, dismissed ...
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    21 mins
  • How To Master Lateral Thinking Skills

    How To Master Lateral Thinking Skills
    Aug 19 2025
    A software engineer grabbed a random word from a dictionary – "beehive" – and within hours designed an algorithm that saved his company millions. While his colleagues were working harder, he was thinking differently. This breakthrough didn't come from luck. It came from lateral thinking – a systematic approach to finding solutions hiding in plain sight. I'm Phil McKinney and welcome to my Innovation Studio. In this episode, we will cover the lateral thinking framework. Not theory – a practical, step-by-step system you can use immediately. You'll try your first technique in the next five minutes. By the end of this episode, you'll have four specific techniques that transform how you approach problems, plus practice methods that make mastery inevitable. And hey, if this kind of framework thinking resonates with you, then hit that subscribe and like button. It helps us with the algorithm. If you want to dive deeper into these topics, then subscribe to my Studio Notes on Substack. Plus, if you know someone who might find this episode useful, feel free to share it with them. Alright, let's dive in. Here's what most people miss: breakthrough solutions don't come from thinking faster or working longer. They come from thinking differently. While everyone else improves using existing tools and approaches, lateral thinkers reimagine entire problems. For example, Southwest Airlines didn't create a better airline experience - they reimagined air travel as mass transportation. Tesla didn't build superior cars - they re-conceptualized personal mobility around sustainable energy. These companies succeeded by approaching familiar challenges through completely different frameworks. The question isn't whether you're smart enough to solve problems - you are. The question is whether you're willing to disrupt your thinking patterns to discover solutions that conventional logical approaches miss. But here's where most people get lateral thinking completely wrong, and understanding this distinction will determine whether you develop breakthrough capabilities or just become better at brainstorming... Lateral Thinking vs Linear Thinking What is the distinction between Linear and Lateral thinking? When faced with a problem, most people use linear thinking - they analyze what's wrong and optimize within existing frameworks. It's logical, sequential, and focuses on improving current approaches. Lateral thinking does something completely different. Instead of improving what exists, it changes how you perceive the problem itself. Let me illustrate the difference with a single example. When customers complained about long wait times, linear thinking said, "Make the elevators faster." Lateral thinking asked, "What if waiting wasn't the real problem?" The solution? Install mirrors next to elevators. People stopped complaining because they were distracted, not because waits got shorter. Linear thinking improved the elevator. Lateral thinking eliminated the problem by changing what the problem actually was. This is Dr. Edward de Bono's systematic method for shifting perceptions entirely. As he explained: "To find breakthrough solutions, change where you're looking, not just how hard you're looking." The challenge isn't that people lack creativity - it's that they don't have systematic methods for breaking free from mental patterns that limit them. Lateral thinking offers specific techniques for generating what de Bono referred to as "movement" in thinking. When everyone in your industry follows similar approaches, breakthrough opportunities emerge for those who think differently. While competitors optimize existing methods, lateral thinkers discover entirely different approaches. This operates on four distinct levels that build systematic capabilities. The progression from beginner to expert follows a pattern that will surprise you... The Four-Level Mastery Framework The lateral thinking framework has four progressive levels. Here's a quick overview of each so you have context before we explore them each in detail. Level One: Suspend Judgment and Break Patterns – Your foundation level. You'll learn to deliberately disrupt automatic thinking responses and embrace ideas that seem absurd. This creates the mental environment where breakthrough solutions can emerge. Level Two: Random Input for Forced Connections – Intermediate level. You'll use systematic provocations to force your brain into unfamiliar territory. This isn't random creativity - it's controlled disruption that bypasses your brain's tendency to look for solutions in familiar places. Level Three: Challenge Sacred Assumptions – Advanced thinking. You'll systematically examine and reverse the fundamental premises everyone else takes for granted. This is about creating "movement" in thinking by making the familiar strange. Level Four: Embrace Deliberate Absurdity – Expert level. You'll find breakthrough solutions by seriously exploring ideas that seem obviously...
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    33 mins
  • Why Fail Fast Innovation Advice is Wrong

    Why Fail Fast Innovation Advice is Wrong
    Aug 12 2025
    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 mins
  • Innovation Partnership Autopsy: HP, Fossil, and the Smartwatch Market

    Innovation Partnership Autopsy: HP, Fossil, and the Smartwatch Market
    Aug 5 2025
    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 mins
  • Why Great Innovators Read Rooms and not Just Data

    Why Great Innovators Read Rooms and not Just Data
    Jul 29 2025
    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 mins