Unconscious Competence and the Need to Unlearn

In this episode of The Innovation Show, Chuck House—legendary HP intrapreneur and author of Permission Denied—joins Aidan McCullen, host of The Innovation Show and a Thinkers50 Innovation Award recipient, to explore the real dynamics behind innovation inside large organizations.

House shares how he repeatedly challenged assumptions, defied orders, built high-performing teams, and navigated the "corporate immune system" to create breakthrough technologies such as the logic analyzer and Pisces system. Together, Chuck and Aidan unpack why innovation is resisted, how success blinds leaders to the next paradigm shift, and what intrapreneurs must do to survive and thrive.

Brought to you by Kyndryl, this conversation blends deep corporate experience with modern innovation thinking—from one of HP's most impactful engineers and one of the world's leading thinkers on transformation and change.

• Why organizations punish failure while preaching innovation

• The paradox of permission: what leaders say vs. what innovators hear

• How established success blinds teams to new paradigms

• Emotional and psychological realities of intrapreneurs

• How to unlearn, relearn, and escape old mental models

• Why existing sales forces resist innovative products

• Hard-earned lessons from HP's logic analyzers & the Pisces project

• What leaders must do to build systems—not heroes—that drive innovation

00:00 Intro & Sponsor

00:30 Chuck House returns

00:57 Defiant innovation at HP

01:44 Permission paradox

03:07 Amazon's failure philosophy

03:47 Radical transparency

05:16 Future architecture & vision

06:00 Chuck reflects on his journey

07:47 AMD recruitment story

17:02 Paradigm shifts

19:34 Organizational resistance

22:42 Innovation cycles

32:26 Unlearning & relearning

40:16 The irony of pointing fingers

40:45 Navigating new paradigms

44:18 Challenges of intrapreneurship

44:33 Winning the sales channel

45:09 Sales force resistance

51:44 Understanding real customers

53:08 Innovation vs incrementalism

01:03:03 Rise & fall of logic analyzers

01:08:00 Managing intrapreneurial projects

01:13:06 Quality, collaboration & culture

01:20:34 Closing reflections

Chuck House is an award-winning engineer, HP Fellow, and author of Permission Denied. His innovations shaped decades of computing and instrumentation, and his perspective on intrapreneurship remains profoundly relevant.

Aidan McCullen is an author, global keynote speaker, innovation consultant, and host of The Innovation Show. A former international rugby player for Ireland, he later moved into transformation roles across media and technology. Aidan is the author of Undisruptable, lectures on emerging technology at Trinity College Dublin, and is recognised by Thinkers50 for his global contribution to innovation and reinvention.

https://aidanmccullen.com