The other day, my friend and mentor David Kelley told me about a famous old assignment legendary Stanford professor Bob McKim used to give his students: he would tell them to keep a bug list. Mind you, this was decades before programming language became common parlance…

"It's your fault, really. You're the one who told us to prototype." A CEO friend of mine, with whom I've been discussing the merits of low-res prototyping and rapid iteration in the context of his public company, jokingly placed the blame upon me for a failed scaling effort today…

Curiosity defines genius, but many of us stifle curious impulses in favor of more "relevant" searches; if we can't rationalize an interest, it gets jettisoned pretty quickly in the name of focus. The irony is, some of history's most prolific and inventive thinkers were insanely curious! Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman is an excellent example of a curious life…

My friend Philipe Barreaud runs the Customer Innovation Lab for Michelin. He’s the kind of guy who tells the technicians to “hang the sign upside down” in the main office, just to signal the value of seeing things differently and challenging people’s perceptions…

Ultimately, over the course of a single day (enabled by meticulous planning and thoughtful pre-program correspondence) 1,059 employees “discussed 106 topics in 171 sessions managed by 138 facilitators in 66 meeting spaces across Pixar’s three buildings…”

The end of the story is, he wins the Nobel Prize. The unexpected part was the twist in the middle of the roller coaster…

To solicit maximum contribution value out of a diverse team, you must create psychological safety (defined by HBS Professor Amy Edmonson as "a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject or punish someone for speaking up"…

In conventional business settings, logic is king. All decisions are stripped of any seemingly unnecessary information (including emotion) just like a hospital is sterilized of germs. Only the facts. Reason must prevail. And yet, all too often, data-rich but emotion-poor meetings end in the same outcome: a resolution to have another meeting…

"We cracked the problem wide open. We have people coming forward we've never heard from before!" This from the leader of a global sales organization growing at 20% month over month…

Dr. Rakesh Suri, MD, Chief Executive Officer and Chair of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery at Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, took an unexpected approach to leading in the face of COVID. Apparently, when the pandemic hit, one thing he required was that a novice be added to every department…

When the pandemic hit, Perry and I started exploring work on a book. After months of fits and starts, we settled on a topic and put it in front of a few publishers. We were humbled by the response. During the holidays, we were offered a deal by Penguin Random House's business imprint, Portfolio. We are pretty excited about it. Should be out next fall, 2022…

Another one of the insights I gleaned from my and Mar's illuminating conversation with the amazing female founders of The Landing (the first of many insights posted here) was how they accelerated product development by creating a design council…

It's tempting to think, "We shouldn't let them know that the product isn't perfect yet, that we're still trying to get it right..." when working on something new. But often, that's the exact wrong instinct…

My friend Mar Hershenson and I have been speaking with some amazing female founders lately. In a recent conversation, Mar asked a spectacular question that led to a profound insight:

The Berkeley Computer Corporation is one of those legendary influencers in the early days of the computing revolution, akin to the famous Homebrew Computer Club that sparked Wozniak's insights and led to the formation of Apple…

{{"uhhhh... uhhhhhhh.... mmmmmuhhhh..." That's what it sounds like when my team is waiting for me to say what I'm thinking. Especially when we're working on a creative challenge, or trying to articulate insights, sometimes I feel like I just. can't. quite. say it…

"A link between a problem and a solution depends heavily on the simultaneity of their 'arrivals.'” - Jim March in his classic HBR Interview, "Ideas as Art" Unless you're often pondering the challenge of putting new things into the world, this obscure quote might be a bit of a head scratcher. 'Simultaneity of arrivals'?? I know…

One of my d.school colleagues (the fabulous Lisa Kay Solomon) shared this exceptional list of 68 pieces of unsolicited advice from WIRED founder Kevin Kelley. He composed the list in honor of his 68th birthday. Here's one of my favorites…

Pithy text message at the end of a grueling workout: "Experiment: I'm opening a Clubhouse room about our class at Stanford to see if anybody wants to talk about it. Hop on for a few?" And with that paltry provisioning, a co-instructor got me to jump into a new app, talking to a "room" full of strangers, right after I'd finished a workout and was still covered with sweat, with absolutely zero notice - something I would never have agreed to in advance…

My friend Mar Hershenson and I have been speaking with some amazing female founders lately. In a recent conversation, Mar asked a spectacular question that led to a profound insight: "I hear from a lot of female founders that they struggle with imposter syndrome. How have you interacted with feeling like you don't belong, like you're out of place?"