Innovate Like Edison: The Success System of America's Greatest Inventor

by Michael J. Gelb and Sarah Miller Caldicott

Book Overview

The bestselling author of How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci joins with co-author Caldicott to translate the best practices of Thomas Edison, the supreme American inventor, into contemporary terms to help todays leaders harness their own innovative potential.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0525950311
• ISBN13: 9780525950318
• Release Date: October 2007
• Publisher: Dutton Books
• Length: 299 Pages
• Weight: 1.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 7.9" x 9.5"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

A book worth buying

I purchased this book for my son in college who is studying to be a mechanical engineer. He found this book at the library and read it cover to cover. He now has his own copy which he is enjoying again....making notes and highlighting to his heart's content. If you are curious about an inventor's mind and Edison's background then this book is for you.

A Handbook for Developing and Launching Innovative Products

Innovate Like Edison is a very important book -- well-researched and a good read. The first section of the book (Edison biography) is certainly enjoyable and enlightening. I found still greater value in the book's abundance of advice and tools for practitioners. For example, in explaining the fifth innovation competency, "Creating Super-value," the authors provide visual tools for identifying white spaces in the market, and for crafting business models. I was also pleased to find self-assessment instruments that enable individuals, teams, and entire companies to score themselves and prioritize their efforts to improve. Innovate Like Edison is a keeper -- I'll be referring to this book again and again.

Edison as Mashup Artist: Combining Discipline, Process and Intuition

Innovate Like Edison is a must-read for anyone who wants to thrive in the "flat world." Had it been written in the 20th century, the book would have been applicable to R & D leaders, and it would have been a nice-to-have for business and government leaders. Innovation was the place kicker on the team during the Industrial Economy because companies created value through efficiency (refining continuous processes), and innovation is about discontinuous processes. In the 21st century Knowledge Economy, however, innovation is the linebacker. Customers merely expect world-class efficiency, but it rarely differentiates. Innovation is now a core competency at most levels of every organization. The problem is, the authors explain, is that very few people are innovation literate, and they don't know how to practice it practically. As I've written extensively, business innovation failures are over 95%, and most new products fail at high rates. We must reposition innovation as a linebacker, and that means understanding it differently and treating it differently. It's a group effort, no longer a specialist activity. Therefore, this book is one of the key guidebooks of government and business leaders, and it's also a fascinating read. Here's why: The book simultaneously tells a fascinating story about Edison *and* uses it to illustrate Edison's best practices as an innovator. It presents the "Edison Innovation Literacy Blueprint," which you can use to start increasing innovation literacy, whether your context is commercial, volunteer work or government. It is well thought out and practical. It is a call to action for people in mature, rich economies. In the U.S., people are used to being the disruptors, the challengers. However, the U.S. is in full middle age, and it must reinvent itself if it wants to remain competitive. For me, where the book breaks into exceptional territory is on the philosophical level. The book reveals that Edison, while a hard-nosed, practical person, also trusted his intuition and encouraged others to do the same. For example, he saw nature as perfect and that it was comprised of mathematical patterns, all we have to do is to recognize them. Think about that a minute. We find what we seek, and if we believe that patterns exist, we have a greater chance of finding them. There is nothing flakey about intuition because it is a means to access a far greater part of our brains. We have to suspend judgement on things and hold them in our concentration (our internal "desktops"). This allows us to mash them up with other things that might reveal patterns. One of my favorites: pick two things that do not seemingly go together and explore how they might. Challenge prevailing assumptions, which are the highest barriers to innovating. Edison was a master of this, and the book includes several practical techniques to build your capability. Another pearl refines the prevailing wisdom of "kill your losers fast." Ediso

A winner from the first page!

Michael J. Gelb has become one of my favorite non-fiction authors . . . his bestseller, HOW TO THINK LIKE LEONARDO DA VINCI, impressed me so much that I now use it the Creativity course that I teach . . . several other books followed, and while they were all good, I do believe that he has topped himself with his latest effort: INNOVATE LIKE EDISON, co-authored with Sarah Miller Caldicott--Edison's great-grandniece. Subtitled THE SUCCESS SYSTEM OF AMERICA'S GREATEST INVENTOR, it is a winner from the very first page . . . there's a short but fascinating biography of Edison, followed by an easy-to-apply system of five success secrets--known as the Five Competencies of Innovation. These are as follows: 1. Solution-Centered Mindset: how to keep unwavering focus on finding solutions; 2. Kaleidoscopic Thinking: how to juggle multiple projects, generate many ideas and the make creative connections or discern patterns; 3. Full-Spectrum Engagement: how to manage and balance a massive workload with social life, family and other obligations; 4. Master Mind Collaboration: how to multiply individual brain power by bringing the right people together; and 5. Super-Value Creation: how to target all creations to an existing market and provide value to potential customers. Gelb and Caldicott describe these secrets, then show how they can be utilized in many different situations . . . I liked how they gave real examples, using both large and small companies . . . in addition, they effectively "updated" Edison's work by viewing it through the eyes of such contemporary thinkers as Edward de Bono, Martin Seligman, Daniel Goleman and others. I also liked the pictures of Edison, as well as the use of drawings he actually did for his many inventions. There were many useful tidbits that I gained from reading this book; among them: * Edison's idea of aligning with those unchangeable "infinite laws" and following "the teachings of his own conscience" meant living by a moral code grounded in honesty, respect, fairness, and integrity. He felt that the highest standards of personal and business ethics were congruent with the precise design of the infinite intelligence. Moreover, Edison hoped that his innovations would help humanity evolve to a higher moral plane. He proclaimed, "The machine has been human being's most effective escape from bondage." Like Gandhi, he believed that "Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages." When he was asked to serve on the Naval Consulting Board during World War I, he made it clear that he would only work on defensive weaponry. As he noted, "I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill." Edison's religious and ethical philosophy is probably best summarized by his observation that, "If we all try to carry out the Golden Rule in this life we have little to fear from the hereafter no matter what our belief may

Innovation: Not just for R & D Anymore

The first thing you'll realize is that this is not your ordinary business book. You will not find self-serving case-studies of previous consulting assignments. You will not read broad generalizations thinly supported by a limited number of examples. You won't learn best practices designed for R & D managers. What you will find is an extraordinarily researched book that provides a rich narrative of the life and times of Thomas Edison. At the same time Innovate LIke Edison crafts a framework that describes how Edison managed his business ventures to achieve his remarkable record of innovation. The payoff is that you will be able to learn how to apply Edison's thinking to today's life and work. The book is filled with some very interesting anecdotes that show both the complexity and elegance of Edison's work. For example, within the first half-dozen pages you'll learn, that the light bulb is not a single invention, but rather a combination of five separate inventions: an improved vacuum process; a thin, high-resistances filament, platinum lead-in wires; a method for holding the filament in place; and connecting these elements in a glass-blown bulb. At the heart of Innovate Like Edison is an approach to categorize the innovation process into five broad competencies: solution-centered mindset, kaleidoscopic thinking, full-spectrum engagement, master-mind collaboration, and super-value creation. Each competency is characterized by five individual elements, making it easy for the reader to understand and grasp the building blocks of innovation. Much as electric light is based on multiple individual inventions, Edison's innovation is the culmination of multiple best practices. As I consider my own background in technology-centric organizations, many ideas would be right at home in any R & D organization. Edison's ideas on experimenting persistently or keeping a notebook are good, common-sense approaches that are used by virtually all R & D organizations. Where Innovate Like Edison really shines is to clearly establish that R & D is not the sole owner of the "innovation" or "invention" mantle. We learn that Edison himself recruited cross-functional teams, rewarded collaboration and encouraged an open exchange of ideas. He truly valued the opinions of customers for ideas on new products and improvements. Perhaps most surprising is that Thomas Edison--the world's greatest inventor--believed that creating an unforgettable and market-moving brand was important as well. He was the inventor of the master-brand marketing approach used by some of the top marketers in the world to this day. There is a serious call-to-action as well. The authors point out that China has surpassed the US as a destination for investment. Only six of the 25 most innovative information technology companies are based in the US. The US is a laggard in terms of R & D as a percentage of GDP. For the US to maintain it's position as a leader in innovation, the conc