Killer Innovations with Phil McKinney - A Show About Ideas Creativity And Innovation podcast

Innovation Partnership Autopsy: HP, Fossil, and the Smartwatch Market

8/5/2025

Killer Innovations with Phil McKinney - A Show About Ideas Creativity And Innovation

0:00

22:07

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 […]

More episodes from "Killer Innovations with Phil McKinney - A Show About Ideas Creativity And Innovation"

How to See Opportunities Others Miss
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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 […]
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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 […]
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I Evaluated Over 30,000 Innovation Ideas at HP: Here’s Why Most Failed
8/26/2025
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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 […]
How To Master Lateral Thinking Skills
8/19/2025
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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 […]
How To Master Lateral Thinking Skills
8/19/2025
32:41
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 […]
Why ‘Fail Fast’ Innovation Advice Is Wrong
8/12/2025
22:38
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 […]
Innovation Partnership Autopsy: HP, Fossil, and the Smartwatch Market
8/5/2025
22:07
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 […]
Why Great Innovators Read Rooms, Not Just Data
7/29/2025
26:28
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 […]
Why Your Best Employees Are Sabotaging Your Decisions (And How to Fix It)
7/1/2025
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The $25 Million Perfect Presentation Picture this: You're in a conference room with 23 executives, everyone has perfect PowerPoint presentations, engineering milestones are ahead of schedule, and you're about to sign off on a $25 million bet that feels like a sure thing. That was the scene at HP when we were developing the Envy […]
3 Innovation Decision Traps That Kill Breakthrough Ideas (And How to Avoid Them)
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Every breakthrough innovation starts the same way: everyone thinks it's a terrible idea. Twitter was dismissed as “breakfast updates.” Google looked “too simple.” Facebook seemed limited to “just college kids.” Yet these “stupid ideas” became some of the biggest winners in tech history. After 30 years making innovation decisions at Fortune 100 companies, I've identified […]

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Innovation Partnership Autopsy: HP, Fossil, and the Smartwatch Market

Killer Innovations with Phil McKinney - A Show About Ideas Creativity And Innovation

More episodes from "Killer Innovations with Phil McKinney - A Show About Ideas Creativity And Innovation"

How to See Opportunities Others Miss

5 Questions That Spot Breakthroughs Before They Happen

I Evaluated Over 30,000 Innovation Ideas at HP: Here’s Why Most Failed

How To Master Lateral Thinking Skills

How To Master Lateral Thinking Skills

Why ‘Fail Fast’ Innovation Advice Is Wrong

Innovation Partnership Autopsy: HP, Fossil, and the Smartwatch Market

Why Great Innovators Read Rooms, Not Just Data

Why Your Best Employees Are Sabotaging Your Decisions (And How to Fix It)

3 Innovation Decision Traps That Kill Breakthrough Ideas (And How to Avoid Them)