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Phil McKinney

Phil McKinney is an innovator, podcaster, author, and speaker. He is the retired CTO of HP. Phil's book, Beyond The Obvious, shares his expertise and lessons learned on innovation and creativity.

How to Recognize Failure Patterns: How HP Quit and Apple Won

A partner named exactly how HP would lose, four years early. HP quit. Apple didn't. Here are the four failure patterns behind both calls.

How to Recognize Failure Patterns: How HP Quit and Apple Won

HP Needs to Stop Before It Can Grow

A response to Mark Vena's "HP Needs More Than a New CEO," and my second letter to HP's board.

AI generated using Adobe tools

How to Improve Your Abductive Reasoning Skills: The Sherlock Holmes Method

School taught you deductive and inductive reasoning. The third kind, abductive reasoning, is where new ideas come from, and it is the one AI can't do.

AI generated using Midjourney and posssibly other tools

The Customers Who Walked Away

Forty-two killer questions that survived years of testing, and the three places to aim them.

AI generated image of a customer walking out of a consumer electronics store

How One Word Steers Your Answer

The anatomy of a bad question, and what makes one great.

How One Word Steers Your Answer

What Half of 13 Reveals About Your Thinking

The power of questions comes down to how your brain works: it answers a question the moment you hear it, whether or not you want it to.

What is half of thirteen? and what does it say about your thinking skills and your curiosity

Retirement 3.0

My third retirement is different. On Jan 1, 2027 I retire as CableLabs CEO and hand the reins to Mark Bridges. Why now, and what's next?

Image of Phil McKinney announcing his retirement from CableLabs

How to Tell a Good Decision From a Lucky One

An excellent decision and a lucky one leave the same evidence: a win. Tell them apart and you stop crediting luck as judgment. That's counterfactual thinking

It your decision good ... or just lucky,

How to Improve Your Weak Signal Judgment

Noticing a trend is easy and almost worthless. Predicting which one reshapes a market, and acting early, is where innovation pays.

How to improve your judgement on which weak signal to act on

How to Improve Your Second-Order Thinking Skills

The most expensive failures don't announce themselves. They start as weak signals somebody noticed once and explained away. Second-order thinking is how you stop being that somebody.

Second-order thinking