Product Description

Michael Gelb, bestselling author of How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci, and Sarah Miller Caldicott, translate the genius of Edison into a revolutionary new success system for innovation.

Thomas Edison is the greatest innovator in American history. Edison’s focus on practical accomplishment set the stage for America’s global leadership in innovation. Now, for the first time ever, Innovate Like Edison translates the best practices of this supreme American inventor into contemporary terms to help today’s leaders harness their own innovative potential.

With their unique insight and expertise, Michael Gelb and Sarah Miller Caldicott introduce a carefully researched, easy-to-apply system of five success secrets inspired by the creative methods of Edison himself. Presented in a step-by-step fashion, Innovate Like Edison provides the tools and strategies you need to compete and win in the business world and in everyday life. Whether you’re an amateur or an executive, Innovate Like Edison is an indispensable tool that will enable you to revamp and revitalize your own creative genius and thrive in today’s culture of innovation.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #147631 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Review
"Gelb and Caldicott demonstrate the timelessness of Edison's systematic approach to innovation as they guide you in applying a profoundly important concept -  'Innovation Literacy.'  This book is a must-have for anyone who wants to turn creative ideas into profitable reality!"
—Dr. Vijay Govindarajan, Earl C. Daum Professor of International Business, Amos Tuck School of Business Administration, Dartmouth College, and author of Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators

"This electrifying book transmits the amazing energy and creative power behind Edison's world-changing innovations. More than just a compelling account of Edison's remarkable genius "Innovate Like Edison" shows us HOW to access our own astounding potential, NOW."
—Tony Buzan,  author of The Mind Map Book

"As you read this astounding book, you will feel as if that light-bulb has appeared above your head, enabling you to see yourself, your world, and your opportunities in a whole new light. You'll enjoy, you'll grow, and you'll profit handsomely from the success secrets you'll learn from the Wizard of Menlo Park."
—Ronald Gross Co-chair, University Seminar on Innovation, Columbia University

“By drawing on the wealth of documents available in the Edison archive, Michael J.  Gelb and Sarah Miller Caldicott have succeeded admirably in showing us how Thomas Edison operated as an ingenious inventor and a sophisticated director of Research and Development.  Even more importantly, in this very readable book  they  take  the lessons they have learned  from studying Edison’s career and make them accessible to anyone  looking for practical  advice on the always difficult task of making Innovation work now.”
—Paul Israel, Editor of The Edison Papers Project at Rutgers University and Author of Edison: A Life of Invention

“Innovation is the art, science and discipline of integrating diverse observations and ideas into insights and converting those insights into high value products or services. Great innovators are great integrators. Michael J. Gelb and Sarah Miller Caldicott have done an exceptional job of integrating and distilling the practices, competencies and behaviors of a master innovator – Edison – into a blue print for all aspiring innovators to follow. In the current global competitive environment, innovation is the key to individual and business success. This book is a must read for business and innovation leaders for their personal and business success.”
—Surinder Kumar, Ph.D; MBA, Chief Innovation Officer, Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company and Author of Riding the Blue Train

“Gelb & Caldicott powerfully translate Edison’s extraordinary genius and his ability to innovate.  Innovate Like Edison fully captures the inspiration – perspiration – and best practices required for innovation success today.  This book offers you a step-by-step blueprint on how to incorporate this critical thinking into you life and business.” 
—Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, Chairman and Founder, X PRIZE Foundation

  “Michael Gelb made Leonardo daVinci’s genius available to us all.   Now, he and Sarah Miller Caldicott introduce us to the business genius of Thomas Edison.  Leaders, managers, and workers in any industry will find here a story and process for not only learning about business innovation, but practical guidance for implementing it.  In a rapidly changing world, we all need to innovate at work.  Gelb and Caldicott use the extraordinary story of Thomas Edison to teach us just how to do that.  If you’re involved in business or government in any way, you should read this book.”
—James G. Clawson, E. Thayer Bigelow Professor of Business Administration, Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Virginia

"Michael J. Gelb continues his brilliant work aimed at helping us all achieve our potential. With Sarah Miller Caldicott, he has authored another masterpiece – highly readable and full of practical wisdom that you can put to use immediately. Much as you may think you know about Edison and the process of innovation, this book will surprise and delight you."
—Dr. Raj Sisodia, Professor of Marketing, Bentley College, Author of Firms of Endearment and The Rule of Three

“While Edison invented the light bulb, Gelb and Caldicott have turned the light on the process of innovation he used.  Reading Innovate Like Edison from start to finish on a flight from coast to coast, I landed with three pages of actions to take that will bring innovation to every corner of our business.”
—Cal Wick, CEO and Founder of Fort Hill Company, Author of the Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning

About the Author
Michael J. Gelb is an internationally renowned pioneer in the field of organizational innovation and has written ten previous books, including the international bestseller How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci. His clients have included DuPont, General Electric, Merck, Microsoft, and Nike, among others.
Founder of the consulting firm StarWave Associates, Sarah Miller Caldicott holds an M.B.A. from Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business. She is a twenty-year marketing veteran and a great-grandniece of Thomas Edison.

From AudioFile
Back in the fifties, Thomas Edison was quite rightly represented to us as the epitome of American industry and innovation. Some of us may have wondered how he did that. Gelb describes five principles derived from Edison's creative genius and provides a practical guide to help us implement our own "innovative potential." Rick Adamson gives a competent performance of this production. Like most works of its type, this is meant to appeal to the mind, not the heart, and Adamson's reading reflects this. He speaks clearly and at a consistent pace. Furthermore, he is expressive enough to keep the listener's attention, yet his tone is always appropriate to the text. M.T.F. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Customer Reviews

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 concepts of innovation need to be well understood throughout the organization, just as companies place a priority on concepts of finance, marketing or human resources.

The book closes with a series of self-assessment tools useful in developing a personal blueprint for innovation literacy.

I highly recommend Innovate Like Edison--a wonderful book that provides the framework to drive innovation throughout the organization.

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 be."

* Thomas Edison's love of nature and his passion for efficiency translated
into a practical concern for energy conservation and environmental
protection. By 1910, Edison had developed a storage battery that could
power automobiles, trucks, and machines. He hoped this development
would lead to the use of batteries as a self-sufficient source of energy
in homes and buildings. In 1912, he constructed and helped to create a
model home in West Orange, New Jersey, that was "off the grid," and
powered solely by his storage batteries. He also began thinking about
ways to harness the power of the wind and sun. Shortly before his
death in 1913, Edison told his friends Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone,
"I'd put money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I
hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that."

* In his teenage years as well as at Menlo Park and beyond, Edison
recorded his thoughts, observations, and visualizations in notebooks.
like other great minds, Edison jotted down his thoughts freely. His
notebooks contain fragments of ideas and plenty of pictures. This
daily practice helped him sharpen his observations, develop new
ideas and make creative connections between diverse aspects of
his research.

If you're looking for an ideal holiday gift for a student or anybody
interested in lifelong learning, you certainly won't go wrong
with getting them a copy of INNOVATE LIKE EDISON.

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." Edison recognized that innovation, ideas or products were packages of patterns. If something didn't appear to be working, he did not "kill" it. He was more mentally flexible because he recognized that the package was not working; there was undoubtedly much gold in some of the pieces, and the book gives several examples. Most corporations' innovation vaults of full of failed innovations, which never again see the light of day.

The Knowledge Economy is transforming the world into a pervasive network of people, and knowledge will be free. In the Industrial Economy, physical power became essentially free. This means that people will add value by mashing things up, by finding patterns. This book is an excellent guidebook for nurturing your own internal mashup artist.