Podcast
Phil McKinney
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 the most innovative companies in the world three years running. He co-founded a company and took it public. Now he runs CableLabs, the …
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At the Reader House Author Roundtable, authors from all walks of life writing in all genres come together to discuss the trials and tribulations of publishing their first book. Learn the pitfalls and the do's and dont's from …
The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney · Aug 19, 2026
Sherlock Holmes never once used deduction. Open any of the stories and watch what he actually does. He notices a tan line on a wrist or mud dried on a boot and leaps to …
18:28The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney · Aug 12, 2026
Think about the last thing you almost bought and did not. You picked it up, you looked at it, you put it back down. You had a reason for choosing one item over its …
23:53The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney · Aug 5, 2026
In 1974, a psychologist named Elizabeth Loftus showed a group of people a film of a car accident. Afterward, she asked half the group one question: how fast were the cars going when they …
13:59The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney · Jul 29, 2026
What is half of thirteen? Stop. Answer it. Don't think ahead, just answer. You said 6.5. I know you did, because everyone does. Nobody chose to answer that question. Your brain solved it before …
5:07The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney · Jul 8, 2026
You trust your gut because it's been right before. But "right" is exactly the thing you've been measuring wrong. A hitter never has this problem. His batting average is honest. It counts hits, nothing …
13:04The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney · Jun 24, 2026
Everyone collects weak signals now. Most of what they collect predicts nothing. A weak signal isn't a thing you spot, it's a prediction you make, and the edge goes to whoever bets on it …
12:49The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney · Jun 10, 2026
In 2000, Toys R Us paid Amazon $50 million a year to sell their toys online. It looked like a great deal. The company that defined toy retail for two generations was solving the …
14:41The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney · Jun 3, 2026
Every playbook, every case study, every innovation workshop is built on the same question: how do you succeed? You map the path forward. You model the upside. Nobody teaches you to ask the harder …
15:45The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney · May 13, 2026
Most product decisions get made by analogy. Someone says, "This is how we've always done it," or "This is what the market expects," or "This is what the competition is doing." The room nods. …
17:07The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney · May 13, 2026
Last June, I was on a business trip in Silicon Valley when a second cardiac device failed. Same problem with a second surgical team six months apart. The full story is on philmckinney.com. What …
15:08The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney · May 6, 2026
Confirmation bias is shaping your decisions right now. Not occasionally. Every day. And the unsettling part is that the smarter you are, the harder it is to see it happening. By the end of …
14:46The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney · Apr 29, 2026
Twelve official definitions for R&D.; Zero agreement. The US government publishes at least a dozen distinct official definitions across agencies, accounting standards, tax authorities, and international bodies. Not one agrees with the others on …
21:01The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney · Apr 15, 2026
Every public company's R&D; number is a lie hiding in plain sight. Not because anyone falsified it. Because the number was never built to tell the truth. It was built to satisfy an accounting …
16:31The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney · Apr 1, 2026
Every public company in the technology industry measures innovation spending the same way. R&D; as a percentage of revenue. Why? Because Wall Street tracks it. Boards benchmark it. CEOs get fired over it. And …
19:59The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney · Mar 25, 2026
Twenty years. Nearly one thousand episodes on this show. And starting today, we're going to try something a little different this season. Season 21 is about the decisions that actually determine whether innovation lives …
13:50The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney · Mar 10, 2026
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 that out. Most people spend that time trying harder: more …
25:08The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney · Mar 3, 2026
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 phenomenon. So when J.C. Penney hired him as …
16:10The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney · Feb 24, 2026
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 …
20:27The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney · Feb 17, 2026
"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 focus narrows. Careful thinking stops. The …
17:06The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney · Feb 10, 2026
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 overtime, a patient was diagnosed with …
15:30The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney · Jan 28, 2026
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 never starting. You tell yourself you need more information. …
14:05The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney · Jan 20, 2026
You've built a toolkit over the last several episodes. Logical reasoning. Causal thinking. Mental models. Serious intellectual firepower. Now the uncomfortable question: When's the last time you actually used it to make a decision? …
14:28The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney · Jan 13, 2026
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. If you've been around this channel for long, you …
11:54The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney · Dec 23, 2025
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 involving hospitals and cardiac surgeons, but that's another story. After …
4:56The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney · Dec 16, 2025
Before the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986, NASA management officially estimated the probability of catastrophic failure at one in one hundred thousand. That's about the same odds as getting struck by lightning while …
16:38The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney · Dec 2, 2025
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. The data says you're dead wrong. Heart disease kills …
16:37The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney · Nov 25, 2025
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. Blood and fluid everywhere. Three bath towels to …
11:50The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney · Nov 11, 2025
In August 2025, Polish researchers tested something nobody had thought to check: what happens to doctors' skills after they rely on AI assistance? The AI worked perfectly—catching problems during colonoscopies, flagging abnormalities faster than …
22:33The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney · Nov 4, 2025
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 hiring decision with three qualified candidates and red flags on each …
23:06The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney · Oct 28, 2025
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 is moving like molasses. Your boss sounds like a …
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