IN THIS ISSUE:

• Letter From Sarah
• Out of the Box - How Thomas Edison Set Goals
• The Edison Minute
• Events and Resources
• About Sarah Caldicott

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Dear Innovator:

We find ourselves at the doorstep of another new year! What will the coming months bring? In the US, we'll be electing a new President as well as monitoring the impact of Facebook's much anticipated IPO. The world will be watching as the Middle Eastern nations which experienced such profound turmoil last spring come to terms with new challenges like voting, setting up a new government, or continuing to challenge the last stubborn vestiges of the status quo. We'll see if China's economy continues to slow. And we'll pray that Japan identifies new economic and business solutions to lift itself out of the havoc wreaked by last year's earthquake and tsunami.

What can we be sure of in 2012? It's a certainty that we'll see more unexpected outcomes, and unexpected patterns. Remember back to January of last year? Who could have anticipated that 2011 would be among the most tumultuous in recent memory? The Arab Spring uprisings. The record-breaking gyrations of the US stock market. The downgrading of US debt. The earthquake in Washington, DC. These events all unfolded in unexpected ways, challenging us to respond with new solutions and new ways of thinking.

Much of what successful innovators do is deal with unexpected circumstances. They must address anomalies that appear in their research. They must navigate the unforeseen consequences of a new technology. Rather than resist these unexpected shifts, however, Edison embraced them. He realized ambiguities are inherent to the innovation process, quipping "If something worked, I was always suspicious."

How can we equip ourselves to fare better when the unexpected strikes?

Sarah with Dr. Nick LaRusso, Director for the Mayo Clinic’s Center for Innovation in Rochester, MN.

The New American Divide: An Unexpected Challenge
One thing we can do is engage in "unexpected conversations." Earlier this month, I was honored to offer the 2012 kick-off speech for a provocative program called "Thinking Differently: A Series of Unexpected Conversations." The keynote was sponsored by the Center for Innovation at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN.

Thomas Edison practiced dealing with ambiguity by initiating hundreds of "unexpected conversations" in his lifetime. He asked, "What would happen if we could record the human voice?" and "What if we could discover a new form of power that was safe and wouldn't explode?" or "How can we take individual images and string them together so they appear seamless to the human eye?"

The unexpected conversations spurred by Edison yielded new-to-the-world industries: recorded sound via the first phonograph and record; the electrical power grid and the incandescent electric light; and, the movies. By engaging in unexpected conversations of our own, we can practice dealing with ambiguity, exercise our imagination, and foster innovating thinking.

It was thus provocative to consider the unexpected conversations that could flow from a concerning combination of trends revealed in a January 21st article in the Wall Street Journal. Written by political scientist and author Charles Murray, the article - "The New American Divide"- revealed how huge shifts in America's core cultural institutions - marriage, religion, work, and community - are transforming how we relate to one another.

Murray's research reveals that, over the last 50 years, the divide between those in America who are married, educated, and engaged in community life as compared to those who are unmarried, underemployed, and disconnected from community has widened considerably.

Murray states that unless we can define new American institutions, create new ways of creating shared meaning, or redefine existing institutions, we will fundamentally tear the fabric of mobility, social equality, and the democratic principles that have guided the US for over two centuries.

This unexpected conversation - "What would a divided America look like?" - led me to think about how innovation is a central part of shared traditions in our nation. Innovators like Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, Wilbur and Orville Wright, Henry Ford, Amelia Earhart, Clara Barton, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and hundreds more have all contributed to the fabric of America as an innovating nation. Do we still believe this?

In 2012, I'll be examining this "unexpected conversation." Edison's Notebook this year will offer insights about how innovation can be a uniting force, creating new kinds of shared meaning. What will your "unexpected conversation" be for 2012?

Goal-Setting: Edison's Methods for Staking on Track Despite the Unexpected
Unexpected circumstances can often jog us off course - especially when it comes to achieving our goals. Edison offers us some solid pointers on how to prevent this. Edison did a remarkable job of staying focused on his goals - even for years at a time, and even in the face of enormous obstacles. Read in this month's Out of the Box about how Edison connected the objective facets of goal-setting with what neuroscientists say is crucial to the staying power of our goals: our emotions. This piece was named 'Feature of the Week' by a leading global innovation blog, InnovationExcellence. Check it out!

Announcing a New Segment in Edison's Notebook - "The Edison Minute"
One of my goals for the New Year is to use more video as a means to comment on current events and their impact on innovation. I'm starting my own YouTube channel next month and have added a new video segment to Edison's Notebook.

Called The Edison Minute, this portion of the newsletter will offer a 3-minute video commenting on how Edison might react to an event or activity in our modern world.The Edison Minute is designed to connect the timeless views of America's greatest inventor and innovator with the unexpected, ambiguous, and provocative innovation challenges we face today. I hope you will enjoy it!

 Celebrating Edison's 165th Birthday - February 11th

Starting Feb, 1st, watch my Facebook page as well as Twitter and LinkedIn for 'the Edison Top 10.' I'll be counting down Edison's top 10 most extraordinary inventions as listed in my new ebook, Inventing the Future.

Edison's 165th birthday falls on February 11th, so I'm dedicating the first 10 days of next month to listing Edison's top 10 greatest inventions via social media. Then, on Feb. 11th, I'll be attempting to blow out all 165 candles on a huge cake celebrating Edison's birthday just prior to a speech I'm giving for a national inventors group.

Do you think I can do it? Watch for the picture I'll post on Facebook AFTER I've huffed and puffed...

Send me a note on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter today if you have any coaching tips on how to blow out all 165 candles! Also, check out this month's Events & Resources section for info on a radio teleclass I'm giving with CBS radio host Al Cole on Feb 7th. We'll be talking about Edison's legacy as we count down to February 11th! Sign up today...I hope you will join us!

Keep innovating,

PS: Please share this newsletter with a co-worker or a friend!

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Out of the Box

How Thomas Edison Set Goals for Innovation and Life Challenges

Excerpted from my Feature of the Week post of January 26th, Innovation Excellence Blog

The State of the Union address often serves as my first mile marker for reviewing the goals I set for the coming year. It's right about now that the shiny New Year's resolutions we made on January 1st don't look so compelling. At best, many of us have lost a big dose of the motivation we felt for our goals in the first place. At worst, our resolutions have evaporated into thin air.

One reason we lag in our ability to successfully realize our goals is that we often express them in ruggedly numeric terms, like: "Eat only 1200 calories per day," or "Run three times a week." By doing this we lop off a big part of the internal mechanism the brain uses to keep us on track: our emotions.

Thomas Edison understood this. Revered as a brilliant inventor and innovator who developed technologies that changed the world, Edison was also a guy who stuck to his goals - despite long odds. Growing up in a lower middle class family didn't deter Edison from setting goals to become a successful inventor. He wanted to build and run his own laboratory - a place where corporate politics wouldn't intervene with his futuristic visions. Taunts from the Royal Academy of Science didn't dissuade Edison from tackling one of the most technically challenging scientific pursuits of his era: achieving incandescence. After failing in his quest to develop technology for mining and grinding iron ore, Edison instead succeeded in devising the first storage battery made from metals.

What Edison realized was that staying positive - and linking your goals to positive emotions - held the key to successful goal achievement.

Edison's Goals Harnessed the Natural Wiring of the Brain
In my research on Edison, I identified a unique solution-oriented quality which Edison possessed in spades: aligning goals and passions. By integrating his work with his life purpose, Edison focused on solving juicy problems which held his interest for long periods of time. He was able to tackle problems that others would have abandoned (and did) long before Edison would even consider throwing in the towel.

Some of the factors which led to Edison's successful goal-creation approach can be explained by modern neuroscience.

Contemporary psychological research validates Edison's approach, and supports the notion that we can all learn how to develop this essential element of success. Dr. John Dacey, professor emeritus of developmental psychology at Boston College, and Dr. Kathleen Lennon of Framingham State College studied and then condensed decades of research into what makes scientists, writers, business leaders, musicians, and other powerfully creative individuals successful. Among the most important traits they uncovered include: 1) passionate goal directedness, and 2) perseverance through self-control.

Dacey and Lennon emphasize that both of those qualities can be developed by adults even if they do not possess those traits in younger years, as Edison clearly did. Citing numerous studies by psychologists including Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Paul Torrance, David Perkins, Robert Weber, and others, Dacey and Lennon conclude that passionate goal directedness helps successful individuals generate "great amounts of energy to invest intensely in their work." These goals are typically long term in nature and associated with a big vision; so the second skill, perseverance through self-control, is critical in allowing fulfillment of the first. Dacey and Lennon define self-control as an individual's willingness to "persevere in the face of frustration."

In other words, success is a function of perseverance, and perseverance is driven by aligning passions with big, long-term goals. Edison's success was the result of his passionate goal directedness." His "pulsating desire" allowed him to "transcend everything" so that frustrations, obstacles, and difficulties seemed to provide him even more energy. As a colleague remarked, "Edison seemed pleased when he used to run up against serious difficulty. It would seem to stiffen his backbone and make him more prolific of new ideas. For a time, I thought it was foolish to imagine such a thing, but I could never get away from the impression that he really appeared happy when he ran up against a serious snag."

Dr. Richard Restak, a clinical professor of neuroscience at the George Washington University Hospital School of Medical and Health Sciences, offers further validation of Edison's approach. Restak argues that many goals go unfulfilled or are prematurely abandoned because they are not designed robustly enough to mobilize the brain. He points out that for the brain to remember to organize behavior in alignment with a goal, it must connect the emotional component with its rational component. This alignment links the prefrontal cortex with the limbic system, thereby dramatically enhancing the likelihood that the goal will be remembered and translated into behavior.

Understanding how to set goals so that they will be remembered and translated into behavior is a simple, critical step toward successful innovation and, of course, toward personal happiness and fulfillment. Yet despite the wealth of information available on the topic, most organizational innovation efforts fail because leaders don't define their goals clearly, and they neglect to align goals with emotions. Innovation literacy begins with a practical understanding of how to define and align your personal goals.

The EDISON Goal Creation Formula
Here is a simple formula you can apply to your own successful goal creation. Mapped to the acronym EDISON, it will guide you to those places where your brain holds positive emotions. The EDISON goal creation formula will aid you in harnessing passions to override the strictly objective and quantitative. As well, it will amp up your goals to new levels, ensuring they become bigger and more purpose-oriented than mere tick marks on a spreadsheet. Rework your goal statements to align with these key elements:

E - Emotional: Express your goal in words that energize and excite you. Feel the passion associated with the fulfillment of your goal. Don't hold back.

D - Decisive: Make a committed decision to give the full force of your own intention to realizing your goal, even if you don't yet see the path to its realization.

I - Integrated: Link your goal to a higher purpose, such as lifelong health, vibrant creativity, peace in your relationships. This connects the achievement of your goal to the benefit of others besides yourself.

S - Sensory: Use all your senses to vividly imagine the manifestation of your goal. Draw it, speak it, dance it, taste it!

O - Optimistic: Engage the most positive image you can conjure around your goal. Map this positive image into your thoughts so that, like the force of gravity, it just 'shows up' all the time easily and without effort.

N - Now: Envision and express your goal in present-time terms. Begin your actions now!

Go back and have a look at your 2012 goals. Reframe them into the EDISON format. Don't lash yourself if you haven't made any progress so far this year - give the EDISON method a try! Allow it to jump-start you to action. What worked for Edison can work for you!

In The Next Issue –The Power of Discovery Learning to Drive Innovation

The Edison Minute
Connecting Edison to Today’s News

Thomas Edison delivering a national radio address from the garden of the Miller Cottage in Chautauqua, NY.

Welcome to The Edison Minute, a brand new section of Edison's Notebook! This new part of my monthly newsletter will feature a topic of hot interest in today's world, and use video to relate what I believe Edison's views might be about it.

The video segments will be very brief - about 3 minutes long. Many of these posts will also be featured on my new YouTube channel...stay tuned for more details!

The Edison Minute replaces the TableStakes section which ran throughout 2011. The TableStakes innovation simulation game is in beta testing for 2012. Please watch my monthly Letter for updates on how the beta is progressing!

To get things started with the January edition of The Edison Minute, we'll kick off with a longer video - my November 2011 TEDx speech entitled, "Inventing the Future, Edison Style." Enjoy!

Click the image to play online

Events and Resources

About Sarah Caldicott

Sarah Miller Caldicott is a great grandniece of Thomas Edison, a 25-year marketing veteran, and co-author of "Innovate Like Edison: The Five-Step System for Breakthrough Business Success." She has assembled teams of highly experienced consultants and trainers to assist her in bringing Edison's Five Competencies of Innovation™ to organizations of all sizes. Sarah and her teams are capable of addressing business challenges from a diverse array of industries, in either a business-to-consumer or business-to-business environment.

Sarah is a dynamic and award-winning speaker, whose engaging style combines substantive business content with humor. Her invaluable experience offers an ideal resource for organizations seeking innovation success in today's rapidly integrating global marketplace.

Born and raised in the Midwest, Sarah received a BA from Wellesley College, where she was named a Wellesley College Scholar. She also holds an MBA from the Amos Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. Sarah resides in Oak Park, Illinois, and has two teenage boys, Nicholas and Connor. For additional information on Sarah, click here.

©2012 by Sarah Miller Caldicott. All Rights Reserved.