21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Innovation: Not just for R&D Anymore, October 30, 2007
This review is from: Innovate Like Edison: The Success System of America's Greatest Inventor (Hardcover)
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.
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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A winner from the first page!, November 22, 2007
This review is from: Innovate Like Edison: The Success System of America's Greatest Inventor (Hardcover)
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.
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19 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
For a book about innovation, this is distinctly unoriginal, October 29, 2008
Edison was America's most prolific inventor whose creations were not just novel and commercially successful but created entire new industries including electric light and power, sound recording, motion pictures and industrial cement and concrete manufacture. He left an enormous legacy in the form of detailed laboratory notebooks, correspondence and legal testimony that documented the way he created these inventions and the commercial enterprises that grew out of them. Gelb is described in the book as "the world's leading authority on the application of genius thinking to personal and organizational development" and Caldicott, a great-grandniece of Thomas Edison. Together these are the ingredients for an innovative, even ground breaking work that merges historical insights with contemporary needs.
Alas this book is not it.
Despite writing that, "The competencies and elements for Innovate Like Edison that we describe in the following pages guided us through our entire creative process" (page xi), the book itself is far from innovative and instead patches together an assortment of other self help books with cursory historical anecdotes. It is a cook book of grandma's recipes sprinkled with a few of her memories.
I had the impression that perhaps Gelb had written the book for another purpose and employed Caldicott to garnish it with bits of family history.
Moreover, it fails to address potentially significant insights that flow from Edison's work particularly by comparing his many successes with his numerous failures. Why, for example, were there so many instances of Edison failing to recognise and exploit things he sketched and observed such as the disk phonograph (sketched in 1878 but patented by Berliner in 1887), a decade alter), wireless phenomena observed in 1875 and patented by Edison in 1885 (US Pat 465,971) and the Edison effect. Likewise, Edison spectacularly failed in his magnetic ore extraction venture and as head of the Naval Consulting Board. Examining these, rather than idolising him could have produced valuable insights to guide would be innovators. In fact, it is in the history, where I would have thought the book should excel that it is weakest, making use of only one recent (but good) biography, that of Paul Israel.
The authors note that it is "clear that global innovation leadership has begun shifting away from the United States." Thinking that the answer lies in mediocre books like this can only accelerate the process.
If you want to get more of the flavour of Edison and his times I suggest Conot, Robert E. 1979. A streak of luck. New York: Seaview Books.
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