p.7 Every organization - not just business - needs one core competence: innovation. - Peter Drucker.
p.11 Edison's five competencies of innovation are:
1. Solution-centered Mindset
2. Kaleidoscope Thinking
3. Full-spectrum Engagement
4. Master-mind Collaboration
5. Super-value Creation
p.13 Edison's voracious reading created a constant stream of ideas, insights, and inspiration that
led him to breakthrough solutions.
p.22 I start where the last man left off. - Thomas Edison
p.23 I have got so much to do and life is short, I am going to hustle. - Edison's comment
to a colleague after staying up all night reading the works of Faraday
p.24 "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is
piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew."
... from Abraham Lincoln's Second Annual Message to Congress
p.37 For Edison, there was no such thing as failure. He viewed all outcomes as
fascinating opportunities for learning.
p.59 To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk. - Thomas Edison
p.61 Edison's signature style as an experimenter and inventor was deeply informed by the depth and
breadth of his reading... "When I want to discover something, I begin by reading up everything that has
been done along that line in the past - that's what all these books in the library are for." Through reading, Edison
"cross-trained" himself in multiple disciplines, using books as a pathway into new fields of endeavor. [JLJ - great
idea]
p.62 Edison's intense knowledge-gathering abilities and his powerful approach to multisensory learning fostered
an uncanny ability to accurately predict the outcomes of his experiments.
p.65 "Tearing the heart out of books" involves focusing in on the parts that are most relevant to
your objectives and choosing to skip the rest. As Edison did, record the key points of your reading.
After you've finished, teach someone what you learned... if Edison were alive today he would certainly be complementing
his voracious reading with intensive research on the Internet.
p.72 There is always a way to do it better... find it. - Thomas Edison
p.75 Resilience in the face of adversity is the greatest long-term predictor of success for individuals
and organizations. [JLJ - perhaps even machines playing a game]
p.92-93 Analogical thinking is a way to generate insights by bringing together ideas that at first
seem quite different from each other, but are later seen to be related in some way... Edison believed analogical
thinking was fundamental to his invention process... John Clement of the University of Massachusetts... discovered
that a key element in the mind of an innovator is the ability "to generate analogies both within and across disciplinary boundaries."
p.101 As he collected data, Edison would regularly ask, "Have I seen this anywhere else before?
Is there a pattern here?" Edison's wide-ranging reading and experimentation enabled him to create a broad context
for his observations. He thus could often discern patterns where others could not.
