When it comes to keeping innnovation and creativity moving in your organization, we can all learn a thing or two from history’s greatest inventor, Thomas Edison. While everyday corporate innovation usually doesn’t entail coming up with new inventions on a regular basis, one can easily draw a few parallels between the prolific inventor’s company and your own business.
Arguably, Edison’s greatest innovation was perhaps not any single invention, but his own laboratory in Menlo Park, NJ. Edison set up an “Innovation Factory” of sorts , which demonstrated that anyone could produce a promising stream of innovations and ideas, if organized and executed correctly.
First he built a process for keeping himself and his workers on track. He created goals that stated that his shop would produce “a minor innvention every 10 days and a major breakthrough every 6 months.”
You could do the same with your business innovations by setting realistic goals for the number and quality of ideas you want to find . Then, implement a tool to help you deliver on it: Issue challenges to your “workers” to drive a constant, but focused flow of ideas through your “factory.”
Another hallmark of Edison’s constant innovation cycle was the fact that he reused (and sometimes re-purposed) good ideas and proven smaller inventions over and over. His phonograph used wiring that he created for telegraphs and an electric motor design that his shop had used in several previous inventions. Good old Thomas wasn’t afraid to blend a few small, already tested elements to create a larger breakthrough concept.
Your organization could do exactly the same thing. By “warehousing” and regularly revisiting “not-ready-for-primetime” ideas that you capture along the way, you’ll begin to identify opportunities for combining two, or maybe several, ideas into larger projects like a breakthrough product or huge time saver.
You don’t need to build a laboratory in New Jersey, though. You can create your very own “Innovation Factory” right now with Flagpole (www.flagpole-software.com). Just set it up, publish your own business challenges, and let your innovators get busy solving problems, submitting ideas, and collaborating right away.
Soon you’ll be meeting your goals of constant innovation. Thomas would be so proud!
Nice post. I do think that setting goals is so important for success in innovation and success just about anything else. I also like that you debunk the myth that innovation comes from ‘genius’ often combining two ‘old’ ideas to create something new can be very effective.