Innovate Like Edison: Using a Wide Angle Lens to View Innovation by Sarah Miller Caldicott”

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Do you use a wide angle lens when thinking about innovation, or do you zoom in for a close-up view instead?

Amazingly enough - despite his reputation as a leading scientist of his day - Thomas Edison viewed innovation as a social force. He didn't specifically limit his thinking about innovation just to science, or technology, or business. Edison viewed innovation as a broad subject, and believed all aspects of life were connected to innovation in some way.

America's master innovator kept detailed notebooks about specific ideas related to innovation projects he was working on. So, in the hundreds of notebooks remaining from Edison's 62-year career, several clues reveal how he was able to keep his "innovation lens" open at such a wide angle.

One clue is that Edison preferred to be known as an inventor rather than a scientist.

This preference seems particularly curious coming from the man who invented Research and Development...the man credited with 5 basic research discoveries in addition to innumerable advances in Applied Science... the man responsible for the development of the incandescent electric light - still regarded as one of the most disruptive innovations of all time.

So...why not call himself a scientist? Edison felt the strictures of science as a discipline hindered his ability to cast a broad enough net when looking for breakthrough solutions to complex problems. He wanted to have unfettered access to the workings of his genius mind. By calling himself an inventor, he felt he could reap the best of science, and the best of creativity.

In tapping the wellspring of his own prodigious mind, Edison hit upon whole-brain thinking techniques which directly activated the frontal lobe of the brain...decades before cognitive psychology existed, or even before we knew of the brain's left and right hemispheres.

Edison's robust ideation process - which I call Kaleidoscopic Thinking, his second Competency of Innovation- we find the keys to unlocking today's complex problems, and techniques for bringing innovation to every aspect of our lives...just as Edison would want it.