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Killer Innovations with Phil McKinney

Killer Innovations with Phil McKinney

Written by: Phil McKinney
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 Why do smart leaders make terrible choices about breakthrough ideas? Phil McKinney spent 40 years making high-stakes innovation decisions — as HP's CTO and now CEO of CableLabs. Each week, he shares the thinking frameworks and decision patterns that separate breakthroughs from expensive mistakes. No theory. No hype. Just what actually works. Running weekly since 2005. Full archive at KillerInnovations.comSee http://philmckinney.com Economics Leadership Management & Leadership Self-Help Success
Episodes
  • Mindjacking - When your Opinions are Not Yours

    Mindjacking - When your Opinions are Not Yours
    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? Not a decision you think you made. One where you evaluated the options yourself. Weighed the evidence. Formed your own conclusion. Here's what most of us do instead: we Google it, ask ChatGPT, go with whatever has the most stars. We feel like we're deciding, but we're not. We're just choosing which borrowed answer to accept. That gap between thinking you're deciding and actually deciding is where everything falls apart. And there's a name for it. What Mindjacking Actually Is Mindjacking. Not the sci-fi version where hackers seize your brain through neural implants. The real version. Where you voluntarily hand over your thinking because someone else already did the work. It's not dramatic. It's convenient. The algorithm ranked the results. The expert weighed in. The crowd already decided. Why duplicate the effort? Mindjacking is different from ordinary influence. You choose it. Every single time. Nobody forces you to stop evaluating. You volunteer, because forming your own conclusion is harder than borrowing someone else's. What exactly are you losing when this happens? The Two Skills Under Attack Mindjacking destroys two distinct capabilities. They're different, and you need both. Evaluation independence is the ability to assess whether a claim is valid. Not whether the source has credentials. Not whether experts agree. Whether the evidence actually supports the conclusion. Decision independence is the ability to commit to a path based on your own judgment, without needing someone else to validate it first. Both skills need each other. Watch what happens when one erodes faster than the other. A woman researches her medical condition for hours. Journal articles. Treatment comparisons. She understands her options better than most medical students would. She walks into the doctor's office, lays out her analysis. It's thorough. Sophisticated, even. The doctor reviews it and says, "This is impressive. You've really done your homework." She nods. Then looks up and asks: "So what should I do?" She can evaluate. She can't decide. Now flip it. Think about someone who decides fast. Trusts their gut. Never waits for permission. How often does that person get burned by bad information they never verified? They can decide. They can't evaluate. Lose either ability and you're trapped. Lose both and you're not thinking at all. The Four Surrender Signals How do you know when mindjacking is happening? It has a signature. Four internal signals that reveal the handoff in progress, if you know how to read them. Signal one: Relief. The moment you find "the answer," you notice a weight lifting. Pay attention to that. Relief isn't insight. It's the burden of thinking being removed. When you actually work through a problem yourself, the result isn't relief. It's clarity. And clarity usually comes with new questions, not a sense of "done." Signal two: Speed. Uncertainty to certainty in seconds? That's not evaluation. You found someone else's answer and adopted it. There's a difference between "I figured it out" and "I found someone who figured it out." One took effort. The other took a search bar. Signal three: Echo. Listen to your own conclusions. Do they sound like something you read, heard, or scrolled past recently? If your "own opinion" matches a headline almost word-for-word, it probably isn't yours. You're not thinking. You're repeating. Signal four: Unearned confidence. You're certain about a conclusion, but ask yourself: could you explain the reasoning behind it? Not where you heard it. The actual reasoning. If you can't, that confidence isn't yours. It came attached to someone else's answer, and you absorbed both their conclusion and their certainty without doing any analysis yourself. Once you notice these signals firing, you need a way to stop the pattern before it completes. The Interrupt The interrupt is a single question: "Did I reach this conclusion, or just find it?" Six words. That's the whole thing. It works because it forces a distinction your brain normally blurs. "I decided" and "I adopted someone's decision" are identical from the inside, until you ask the question. Test it now. Think about the last opinion you formed. The last purchase you made. The last recommendation you accepted. Did you reach that conclusion, or just find it? The interrupt doesn't tell you what to think. It tells you whether you're thinking at all. Finding an answer isn't the same as reaching one. This matters more than you might realize, because the pattern is bigger than any single decision you make. The Aha Moment: The Illusion of Expertise Researchers at Penn State looked at 35 million Facebook posts and found something remarkable: seventy-five percent of shared links were never clicked. ...
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    14 mins
  • CES 2026 - Battle of the AI Robots

    CES 2026 - Battle of the AI Robots
    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 know I do this every year. This is 20-plus years I've been coming to the Consumer Electronics Show. Normally, I don't cover tech and new products on this channel—except for once a year at CES. And it's less about specific companies and what they've announced. You can find that on thousands of channels on YouTube or podcasts. What I like to talk about are the trends—the trends that are emerging—and give you my view and opinion on what they really mean for the innovation space. Are we really innovating, or are we just regurgitating the same thing year after year? I do have some notes here that I'll be glancing at as we go through this today, and we'll be splicing in videos I took on the show floor, along with video supplied to us by CES, to give you a feel for what was here and what's going on. The Show's Legacy First, let's recognize that the Consumer Electronics Show is now in its 59th year. It's a spin-off from the old Chicago music show back in the late 1960s. Yes, the late '60s. It's gone through some gyrations over the decades and remains one of the few big shows that survived COVID. Traditional Consumer Electronics As usual, one of the big emphases is TVs, displays, home automation, new refrigerators, new washers and dryers—true consumer electronics, things you would find and put into your home. This year was no different. The big manufacturers were here, along with a number of new smaller manufacturers showcasing new TV technologies. Micro LED is the new buzzword bouncing around the show, and there were plenty of displays to see. I'm a big TV guy, so I definitely had to check that out and see what could be the next TV I put into my house. The AI and Robotics Takeover The one thing about this year's show that was just overwhelming was robots and AI. They were everywhere. I couldn't even tell you how many times we saw AI applied to things that make no sense—though some applications were actually pretty smart. But how many AI toilets do you really need at any given show? On the robotics side, we saw all the familiar ones—like lawn mowers that automatically find your boundaries. One was actually selling the feature that you could program in graphic designs, and it would cut your yard in such a way that the design would appear in your lawn. We also saw humanoid robots, robots doing backflips, robots dancing with people, dancing hands where the fingers are moving. You could buy just the hands or the arms or the elbows and assemble your own robots. It was pretty crazy. Then we started seeing the combination of AI and robots—interactive robots where you could stand there, talk with them, point, and they would follow your commands. Pick up this item. Move this item somewhere else. Not programming through some controller, but simply pointing and talking to direct the robot to do what you want. The Evolution of Electric Vehicles One thing we've seen in past shows was the big emphasis on electric vehicles. This year, the EV car market—which we've seen slow down generally—also slowed down here at the show. However, what we saw in its place focused on two areas: Commercial EVs and Hybrids: There was significant attention on commercial use of EVs, particularly hybrid electric vehicles with combustion engines. Emergency Response Innovation: One exhibit that really impressed me was a fire truck supplied by Dallas Fort Worth Airport. This massive Oshkosh fire truck is a hybrid that uses electric motors for high torque and high acceleration—literally shaving seconds off response time. Given the limited distance on airport property, if there's a disaster or fire requiring quick reaction, the electric motors can accelerate very quickly. There are only about 15 of these trucks in the world, and something like six or seven are just at Dallas Fort Worth Airport. I spent a fair amount of time with that team. This is a perfect example of smart innovation—innovation that isn't just because something is shiny and new. They thought carefully about how to use it, when to apply the right design, leveraging the benefits of electric while using the combustion engine to run the water pumps. Electric Motorcycles: The other area with significant EV presence was motorcycles, particularly dirt bikes. When you're going out for the day to have some fun, the low noise of an electric motor means you're not disturbing rural areas with a combustion engine. Another example of good, smart innovation. Autonomous Vehicles in Commercial Applications The other big area for the show was autonomous vehicles—not just EVs, but vehicles that can operate themselves, particularly in commercial use like farming. John Deere has a long history of autonomous farming with very accurate planting using GPS technologies. Caterpillar had a ...
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    12 mins
  • Thinking 101: A Pause, A Reflection, And What Might Come Next

    Thinking 101: A Pause, A Reflection, And What Might Come Next
    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 twenty-one years, you learn what lands and what doesn't. You learn not to get too attached because you never know what's going to connect.

    But this one surprised me.

    Thinking 101—the response has been different. More comments. More questions. More people saying, "This is exactly what I needed."

    It's made me reflect on why I started this series.

    Years ago, I was in a room with people from the Department of Education. I asked them a simple question: Why are we graduating people who can't think?

    Not "don't know things." Can't think. Can't reason through a problem. Can't evaluate an argument.

    Their answer was... let's just say it wasn't satisfying.

    That moment stuck with me. When AI exploded onto the scene—when everyone suddenly had a machine that could generate answers instantly—it became clear: thinking for yourself isn't just valuable anymore. It's survival.

    That's what Part One was about. The Foundations. Building your thinking toolkit.

    So what's next? For the next few weeks—nothing.

    We're taking a breather for the holidays. I'm going to spend time with my wife, my kids, my grandkids.

    We'll be back in early January. And if you're heading to CES in Las Vegas that first week—let me know. I'd love to meet up.

    But before I go, I have a question for you.

    Should there be a Part Two?

    I have ideas. If Part One was about building your toolkit, Part Two could be about what happens when you have to use it. Because knowing how to think and making good decisions aren't the same thing. Real decisions happen when you're tired. When you're stressed. When your own brain is working against you.

    Part Two could be about that gap—between knowing and doing.

    But I want to hear from you first. Should I do it? What topics would you want covered? What questions are you wrestling with?

    Post a comment. If you're a paid subscriber on Substack, send me a DM—I read those.

    And speaking of paid subscribers—that's the best way to support the team that makes this happen. Twenty-one years of showing up doesn't happen alone.

    You can also visit our store at innovation DOT tools for merch, my book, and more.

    Part One is done. The holidays are calling.

    Thank you for making this series land the way it did.

    See you in January.

    I'm Phil McKinney. Take care of yourselves—and each other.
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    5 mins
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