Innovate Like Edison: Playing at Work by Sarah Miller Caldicott:

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If Thomas Edison were alive today, he'd feel right at home at Google. Take Google's Mountain View, CA headquarters, add some high-tech lab facilities, throw in a few manufacturing plants, and Edison would be set.

Why? It's not just because Google is one of the most innovative workplaces in the world - although that certainly helps. It's because Google's work culture is a stellar 21^st century example of one of Edison's most important innovation principles, taken from his Third Competency of Innovation: "Play" during work hours.

That's right. Edison loved "play" mode just as much as he loved "serious" mode. In his Third Competency - called Full-spectrum Engagement - we see Edison seamlessly navigating opposite states of behavior: working in solitude and working on a team; dealing with complexity as well as expressing ideas with simplicity; being serious and being playful. The dynamic tension created by these opposites provides an important canvas for the innovator.

For Edison, work wouldn't have been "work" without play. He regularly pulled practical jokes on his employees, like fashioning bogus cigars out of tobacco leaves filled with hair clippings. (Someone was breaking into his private stash of Havana's and he had to figure out who the culprit was...)

How about lunch at 10 PM? Another Edison favorite. He called it "Midnight Lunch." He'd bring food in for everyone who was working late - even allowing them to invite their families. After eating, Edison's merry throng would sing, tell jokes, and generally goof around. Until they all went back to work - at midnight.

At Google, Edison would delight in being able to build a castle out of cardboard blocks right in the middle of a hallway, or revel in taking a nap in a space-age sleeping pod after a few hours of cloud computing, scanning the world's libraries, or completing a complex search algorithm.

But there's something even more important that Google knows about "play." Although Edison realized intuitively that play separated the order-takers from the innovators, today we know that play actually sparks insights. In fact, neuroscientists tell us that the brain needs time to rest from time to time so it can process all that data we're mashing into it. The left/right brain exchange has to take place FIRST before those cool ideas and insights can pop out. And all that resting happens during "play."

So, take a cue from Edison: to innovate, start playing!

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Sarah Miller Caldicott, Innovate Like Edison, business, Thomas Edison,books, Penguin Books