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One of Thomas Edison's most extraordinary gifts lay in his ability to connect to the future with fluidity and ease. While reading entries from dozens of Edison's notebooks as I researched Innovate Like Edison, it felt almost as if Edison lived inthe future.
By decreasing the mental distance between the future and the present, Edison created a fluid relationship with time. This notion of "decreasing distance" also holds the key to how Edison and his teams successfully mastered complexity.
Last month, I described three techniques Edison used to personally address complexity in his own work. (These are reprised later in this article.) But as we consider how to master complexity at the level of the team or the enterprise, we must look at how Edison navigated networks and entire systems.
Dr. Clotaire Rapaille, author of The Culture Code, reveals that to address complexity, we must consider how networks are structured - and not just evaluate their content. The ability of Edison's teams to master complexity shows us that he realized "context" rather than "content" held the key to success.
Three Core Steps for Teams to Master Complexity
In mastering complexity, Edison created structures that reduced the operational distance between people, markets, and processes. Edison designed a kind of "flatness" into his organizations that created speed without a loss of information. The three core ways Edison and his teams mastered complexity include:
- PEOPLE: Creating multi-disciplinary teams that did not have entrenched interests in a particular department or division, allowing boundary-spanning activities - versus turf protection - to predominate. This decreased the distance between actors and decision-makers within the network.
- MARKETS: Arming teams with access to diverse economic and market trends, and encouraging interacting with customers in their actual work or home environments. This decreased the distance between Edison's companies and the markets he served.
- PROCESSES: Providing tools which decreased the amount of time or energy required to develop a common language around the challenge at hand, using visual communication such as drawings or prototypes as a major leverage point. This decreased the distance between ideas and actions.
PEOPLE: Draw Upon Diversity, Decrease the Distance Between Actors and Decision-Makers
Edison's first step in helping his teams tackle complexity is revealed in his beliefs about how teams should be designed. Edison believed the greatest progress could be made by mixing up the types of expertise he brought to the problem-solving process. As a result, it was common for chemists to work side-by-side with physicists, acoustical scientists, mathematicians, and other diverse disciplines.
Edison also insisted that there be a mix of generalists and specialists working on each team, so that no one particular mindset prevailed. As well, teams were given their own budgets, so no one had to repeatedly "ask" another department for funding. Each of these steps increased the operational autonomy of the team, and decreased the presence of permission-seeking behaviors.
 Today, neuroscience and management science validate Edison's approach. Studies reveal that a diversity of perspectives accelerates problem-solving early in the development cycle of any project or process.
Dr. Robert Langer, a David Koch Institute Professor at MIT and director of one of the largest private laboratory in the United States, consistently models his project teams as Edison did. Recognized for its ability to churn out innovations and innovative solutions to complex biomedical problems, Dr. Langer states:
"My lab has people with 10 to 12 different disciplines in it - molecular biologists, cell biologists, clinicians, pharmacists, chemical engineers, electrical engineers, materials scientists, physicists and others. Many of our ideas - such as tissue engineering - require these different disciplines to move from concept to clinical practice. It makes it possible to do nearly anything ‘discipline wise' in the lab."
If your teams are struggling with complex challenges, look at the team's structure. How much diversity is present?
MARKETS: Access Diverse Trends and Observe How They Connect to Behaviors
A second tool Edison used to help his teams master complexity was to train them to imagine the future, and then connect their insights into how people would - or could - actually behave in that future world.
 Edison viewed trends as a seed bed for what the future held in store. His 10,000 volume library at the West Orange Laboratory contained information from the proceedings of the Royal Academy of Science, as well as industry journals from the worlds of chemistry, mathematics, and more. Edison made these volumes available to his teams, and also encouraged them to read the daily newspaper for trend information.
Today, we can greatly accelerate our access to trends through use of the Internet and trend-monitoring tools available at sites like www.trendwatching.com and www.futurethink.com among others. Becoming a "trendwatcher" is a powerful way to augment the ability to see into the future.
Importantly, in mastering complexity, Edison encouraged his teams to take the next step and connect these future visions to what consumers - or businesses - actually do, or how they could actually be led to behave.
When envisioning how the system for electrical power could be brought into a real home, Edison sent teams of people into houses in southern Manhattan - where the world's first central power station was being built - and had them watch how people used kerosene lanterns, or gathered wood for cooking, as well as other interactions with "power" in their homes. The insights drawn by these teams led to an understanding of where to place the on/off switches for lighting in each room, and why it was valuable to have overhead lighting in homes.
When was the last time you or your teams went on-site to a customer's location and watched them interacting with your products/services, or those of a competitor? Have you considered what trends will impact their behaviors over time?
PROECESSES: Develop a Visual Codes to Speed Communication, Expression of Ideas
The third step which enabled Edison's teams to master complexity was the use of visual tools. Neuroscience tells us that visual communication accelerates the mind's ability to understand virtually any kind of idea or challenge being evaluated. Two-dimensional forms of communication - like drawings and diagrams - as well as three-dimensional forms, like prototypes, were crucial components to the mastery of complexity within Edison's workplace.
Because Edison employed individuals from diverse cultures, many languages were spoken in his laboratories and manufacturing facilities. Much like file-sharing systems operate today, drawings, blueprints and prototypes helped slice through the communications barriers that existed on Edison's teams due to language or educational training.
By using images as a key language for every project, Edison accessed the pattern-seeking and knowledge-seeking skills of his employees more powerfully than through a constant use of words. Edison's project managers also found visual communication to be extremely valuable when introducing new technologies to team members, contactors, and consumers alike.
 The new Emerson Innovation Center I visited earlier this month in Marshalltown, Iowa was developed by the famed Fisher division of Emerson Process Management. A key advance embodied by the center is its ability to provide full-scale working models of actual valves, real pipes, and live process control systems that would be present at a job site, or in a factory. By building and thus "envisioning" a segment of a full-scale system, Fisher engineers anywhere in the world can navigate the complex challenges of driving fluids or other compounds at high pressure through a diverse array of materials and temperature conditions.
Consider how omnipresent visual systems are in the icons we use every day to help us navigate spreadsheets, software, or smart phones. What systems do you have in your organization for visualizing ideas? How could you employ more visual communications in your daily team efforts?
Here is a summary of the key steps you can take - starting now - to translate Edison's mastery of complexity into your daily work or personal world. Check back to the August edition of Edison's Notebook to refresh your understanding of the "schema:"
To master complexity at the level of the individual:
- Connect goals you're passionate about to goals that align with the challenge you're tackling.
- Expand your neural networks by keeping a notebook of ideas and insights.
- Add new neural networks to your schema by working in solitude, and watching for patterns and connections among the ideas you're studying.
To master complexity within your teams:
- PEOPLE: Create multi-disciplinary teams which encourage boundary-spanning activities. This decreases the distance between actors and decision-makers.
- MARKETS: Arm your teams with diverse economic as well as market trends, and enable teams to interact with customers in their actual work or home environments. This decreases the distance between organizations and markets.
- PROCESSES: Develop tools which create common languages or codes that decrease the amount of time or energy required to communicate. Maps, pictures, visual communication platforms, and drawings or prototypes are ideal leverage points. This decreases the distance between ideas and actions.
Mastering complexity allows you to bring the future closer! It enhances your ability to lean forward and touch "what's next." Be decreasing the distance your organization places between people, markets and processes - as Edison did - you can move toward innovation success in the complex global environment we face today.
In the next issue: - Trends as Innovation Transformers
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While delivering a speech in June of this year, I had a chance to visit Iowa for the very first time. Although this fact didn't seem particularly unusual to me, it struck the audience as an oddity that a Wisconsin native had taken over 40 years to reach a state that lies merely hours away. 
GLOBAL MANUFACTURING AND ENGINEERING - I had an extraordinary experience last week at the grand opening of the new Emerson Innovation Center in Marshalltown, Iowa. A famed company that has offered Wall Street a positive look at how to weather the Great Recession, Emerson Process Management and its Fisher Division have invested in an extraordinary state-of-the-art global facility allowing full-scale testing of Fisher's valves and process control systems. Fisher Process Management employees designed and led the construction of the facility - an amazing feat of engineering in and of itself. 
NEWSPAPERS - Seismic shifts in the newspaper industry were front and center at this year's annual Iowa Newspaper Foundation conference. As a preview of the changes afoot, USA Today recently announced it will launch a fully mobile newspaper format within two years. What will the shift to mobile do to current business models and revenue models in the newspaper world? The media world? An avid reader of newspapers and a journalism enthusiast, Edison would be fascinated by these questions today. 
INSURANCE - Congratulations to Haylor, Freyer & Coon - the largest insurance brokerage in the U.S. - on your 2010 results! Earlier this month I traveled to Syracuse, NY to speak to over 60 business leaders from this decades-old company. As a bonus, I also got a chance to see the Carrier Dome, where the Orangemen play. Butler's victory over the Orangemen to win a berth at the Final Four in Indianapolis this year was a sore subject…let's see how the 2011 Bulldogs basketball season goes!
The 2011 Edison Awards® season has officially begun! As of
September 1, the Edison Best New Product Awards® are accepting
Nominations for the 2011 awards year.