phil mckinney
R&D Spending Is the Most Misleading Number in Business
The government collects the real R&D split from every public company. It's locked away by federal law. Here's how to estimate it anyway.
They're Everywhere
And we finally have a word for them.
How To Quit Defending Decisions You Know Are Wrong
The reason you can't let go isn't logic. It's that quitting would threaten who you believe you are.
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 stranger. The group wasn't changing people's answers. It was changing what they actually saw. We'll get to that study in
Shell Had Six Years to Prepare. I Had Four Months.
Outstanding leaders under pressure aren't making great decisions. They're executing decisions they already made. The difference is preparation. And most leaders skip it.
I Told the Department of Education Their Graduates Were Useless
The room went silent. But I'd been watching this crisis unfold for decades—starting on a factory floor in 1981
5 Questions That Spot Breakthroughs Before They Happen
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
I Evaluated Over 30,000 Innovation Ideas at HP: Here's Why Most Failed
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
How To Master Lateral Thinking Skills
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
Moving to Substack: A New Chapter
Innovation veteran Phil McKinney launches "Studio Notes" on Substack—revealing untold stories from 30 years of innovation leadership. What really happens in Fortune 100 boardrooms? Discover raw wisdom from failures and successes. Experience innovation's human journey as lived, not taught.
