What Is A Midnight Lunch? Edison Webinar Feb 11 2013

Midnight Lunch with Thomas Edison:

How Collaboration Propels Innovation

Success

Sarah Miller Caldicott CEO, Power Patterns of Innovation Great grandniece of Thomas Edison

© 2007 - 2013 Sarah Miller Caldicott

© 2007 - 2013 Sarah Miller Caldicott

America’s Greatest Innovator,

Thomas Edison: 1847-1931

© 2007 - 2013 Sarah Miller Caldicott

Miller/Edison Heritage

Robert Anderson Miller

Mina Miller Edison

Lewis Miller

© 2007 - 2013 Sarah Miller Caldicott

Edison’s Botanic Laboratory - Ft. Myers, FL

© 2007 - 2013 Sarah Miller Caldicott

Researching Edison’s Life and Work

The Edison Papers Archives at Rutgers University

Happy birthday, Thomas Edison!

“Anything that won’t sell, I don’t want to invent. Its sale is

proof of utility, and utility is success.”

- Thomas Alva Edison

“I would like to live about 300 years. I think I have ideas enough to keep me

busy that long.”

- Thomas Alva Edison

© 2007 - 2013 Sarah Miller Caldicott

Midnight Lunch

Edison Built New Markets

Pioneered 6 industries:

Document duplication (1873) Telecommunications (1876) Recorded sound (1877) Electrical power (1879) The Movies (1893) Storage Battery (1903)

Without Collaboration, Innovation Stalls

Today’s Conversation

• Shifts in global environment

• Why collaboration is crucial

• What is a midnight lunch?

• Creating collegiality

World Innovation Forum (2009)

Changes in global playing field for business

• C.K. Prahalad: “Global Reset”

• Familiar business models shifting

– Auto, Finance, Energy, Retail

• Merging of strategy, innovation,

value creation

• New ability of organizations to create with customers

• “Anticipate and create” vs. “Sense and respond”

Trends Propelling Collaboration

Collaboration central to staying relevant

• Rishad Tobaccowala - VivaKi

Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer

1. Staying relevant

2. Innovating

3. Attracting and retaining talent

• Collaboration essential to all 3

Trends Propelling Collaboration

Shifts in composition of the global workforce

• 1 billion working age adults: 2020

- Gen Y to dominate: 2025

• Proliferation of smart devices:

- > 5 billion mobile phones globally

- Desire to “be connected”

• Virtual teams increasingly popular

- 40% now in virtual teams (Forrester, 2012)

- 56% in three years

• Organizational hierarchies flattening

New Book: Midnight Lunch (Wiley)

Learn how to collaborate in 21st Century How did Thomas Edison develop winning innovation teams? What new skills would Edison advocate for the digital age?

Midnight Lunch

in Dec/Jan ‘13 edition

of Fast Company!

bit.ly/VY7GkP Book

bit.ly/TlUz9r Article

Edison’s 4 Phases of True Collaboration™

Collaboration powered Edison’s innovation success

• Phase 1: Capacity (TODAY)

• Phase 2: Context

• Phase 3: Coherence

• Phase 4: Complexity

© 2007 - 2013 Sarah Miller Caldicott

Edison Saw Collaboration As…

Applying discovery learning

within a context of complexity,

inspired by a common goal or a

shared purpose.

© 2007 - 2013 Sarah Miller Caldicott

Collaboration vs. Teamwork

Collaboration and teamwork are NOT the same

“Collaboration is not the same thing as

teamwork. Teamwork is simply doing

your part. Collaboration involves leveraging

the power of every individual to bring out

each other’s strengths and differences.”

- Greg Cox, President,

Dale Carnegie Training - Chicago

Phase 1: Capacity

Create the foundations for collaboration to thrive

• Small teams of 2 to 8 people

• Common “experiences”

- Midnight lunches

• Diverse expertise, styles

• Practiced taking risks together,

and “discovering”

Common Ritual: Midnight Lunch

Edison transformed employees into colleagues

• Ritual blended social,

scientific language

• Low “social distance”

• Order in food

• Generated trust, deep exchange

Complex Adaptive Systems

Midnight lunch helps teams adapt, address complexity

• Nimble communication

• Share “private information”

• Casual exchanges, social setting

- Anne Donnellon: “Team Talk”

Midnight Lunch: Start With Questions

Forming master questions

“How do substances burn?”

“How does the eye perceive motion?”

“How can I capture sound so it can be

replayed again and again?”

Form Hypotheses

Create new context – and future states

• Explore master question via

hypotheses: if/then

- If we could minimize…then…

- If it would be possible to… then…

- If we could increase the amount

of … then …

- Inventing from the future, not

incrementally from the present

Edison Valued Experimentation

Context emerges when solutions are still forming

• Don’t lock down too soon

• Platform of discovery, not tasks

• Sharing of outcomes, scenarios

• “No experiments are useless.”

- Thomas Edison

• Practiced risk-taking

Midnight Lunch Drives Discovery Learning

Rapid learning cycles and “flat-ness”

• Faster “learning cycles”

• Experimentation allows us to

“anticipate and create”

• Could you hold your own

midnight lunch?

• Practice questioning, hypotheses,

experimenting, risk-taking!

Collaboration a Crucial Superskill

Midnight Lunch: Foundation for Collaboration to Thrive

• Connecting small, diverse groups

• Create collegiality

• Casual dialogue, and food!

• Experiments, questioning, hypotheses

• Share “private information”

• Collaborative language – we/us

• Deeper than brainstorming…creates new context

• Release ingenuity!

How Collegial Are You?

Edison modeled collegiality

“He conversed, argued and disputed with us all as

though he were a colleague on the same footing.”

- Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

What Is Your Edison Story?

Celebrating Edison’s Birthday – Midnight Lunch • Post on my Facebook page: Power Patterns of Innovation

- Qualify to win a free signed book!

• Do a Team.Read™ - free workbook! • Purchase 8 copies of Midnight Lunch - www.powerpatterns.com/Books

- email me scanned receipt at [email protected] 2/11 to 2/18

• Tweet your Edison story and follow me at @SarahCaldicott, use #midnightlunch

©2007 - 2013 Sarah Miller Caldicott

Expand Your Smart Layer

Sarah Miller Caldicott

CEO, The Power Patterns of Innovation [email protected] | www.powerpatterns.com

Twitter: @sarahcaldicott | LinkedIn: Sarah Caldicott

Facebook: Power Patterns of Innovation

YouTube book trailer: bit.ly/UTBFN8

Book Slideshare: slidesha.re/YpH0wz

Book purchase: www.powerpatterns.com/Books

Midnight Lunch (Wiley) also available from Amazon, major book sellers