Talking to others is the surest way to find a problem that matters. And if you find a a problem that matters, you’re well on your way to a desirable innovation.

It’s hard to overstate the value of a good old fashioned obsession. Apathy is the enemy of creativity. Obsession fuels innovation. Here’s a great story of obsession at Netflix.

An all-too-typical email from an earnest founder (“How do I know which of my ideas will get the highest valuation…”) reminded me of Steve Jobs’s explanation of why Apple triumphed over Microsoft’s Zune with the iPod. His words about motivation shed light on an oft-overlooked factor in the age of entrepreneurship.

There’s a great story about Jim Yurchenco discovered the insight that fueled the wildly popular and widely imitated original Apple mouse…

Mark Parker, former CEO and now Executive Chairman of Nike, is in the pantheon of Steve Jobs when it comes to design-forward innovation. He's one of the few designers to drive innovation at the level that he did from the chief spot…

Phil Knight's "Shoe Dog" has to be one of the best memoirs on entrepreneurship on the market. It's filled with reasons not to do something as crazy as start a company. But lest I digress, I wanted to mention what I consider to be Nike's secret weapon: Bill Bowerman's insatiable desire for victory on the track, and in particular, his willingness to experiment wildly to achieve it. He may be the quintessential example of "ideaction" embodied in a single individual. As Oregon's track coach, he had access to a "laboratory" of sorts: his athletes and their performance. But the thing that distinguishes him in my mind is the relentlessness and precision with which he experimented on his team's footwear in search of an edge…

One of my favorite origin stories: unbeknownst to me, an unlikely collision of my two worlds resulted in a product which has impacted my life almost every single day for the last 11 years…