(View entire post here)

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...)

(View entire post here)

Recently, I've seen a number of plucky black-and-white tv ads from Sprint featuring CEO Dan Hesse. The campaign offers people the opportunity to come into any Sprint PCS store and learn how to use one of their smart phones. You can even take advantage of this offer - presumably - if you already have a Sprint phone.

Wow! Someone finally figure out that customers don't always intuitively know how to use key features of their smart phones, or PDA's! Too bad this golden idea probably comes too late for Sprint to claw back the market share it's lost in the past few years.

In 1878, Thomas Edison invented the carbon button microphone that became the first commercially successful telephone transmitter. And Sprint, 130 years later, is finally learning one of Edison's key lessons for successful marketing, taken from Edison innovation Competency #5: Super-value Creation.

Thomas Edison knew that he could only build a successful brand if his customers understood the "utility" of what they were buying. He said, "...utility is success." Edison realized that if a customer didn't understand how to use what he or she was purchasing from him, it would be much tougher to convince them to buy the Edison brand again in the future.

(View entire post here)

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.

(View entire post here)

For the last decade or so, the U.S. - like the rest of the developed world - has been transitioning out of the Industrial Age and into the Information Age. Actually, I think our present era might more appropriately be called the Innovation Age. An innovation mindset is now a must-have for every individual, organization, and entrepreneur alike.

Thomas Edison lights the way on how we can all begin to "think like innovators" today. Edison used his "Five Competencies of Innovation" to train employees to think like innovators all the time, regardless of whether they worked in one of his storied labs or in an Edison manufacturing operation. He sustained an innovation-driven culture that allowed everyone to use their best thinking every day.

This is where Innovation is heading now...it's moving out of isolated "silo's" in companies to the hallways and the aisles of every organization.

We've seen this pattern before. In the 70's..."Quality" was something only a handful of people were responsible for. Even in large organizations, there were only a select few who could stop the production line. Then, in the 80's, Quality became everyone's responsibility.

The same was true for "Customer Service" in the 80's. Back then, Customer Service was the bailiwick of only an isolated group of folks sprinkled throughout a company. Then in the 90's, Customer Service got pushed across all levels of an organization. Today, you don't hear employees saying, "That's not my department..." in response to customers' questions.

(View entire post here)

Sarah Miller Caldicott is our guest blogger during the week of November 10th. If you have any questions for Sarah Miller Caldicott, add a comment to any of her posts. Here is some more information about Innovate Like Edison:

Michael J. Gelb, author of the international bestseller How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci, and Sarah Miller Caldicott, a descendant of Thomas Edison, introduce a revolutionary new system for successful innovation.