By the Price of Business, US Daily Review Radio Partner.

Author Sarah Miller Caldicott (who is also the Great Grandniece of Thomas Edison) is a nationally recognized expert in innovation.  Recently she was a guest on the Price of Business show (M-F at 8 pm CST on 1070KNTH.com on which she visited with the show’s host, Kevin Price about the need for innovative thinking in business today and what people need to do to achieve such.

During the show, Caldicott explains how innovation can be used by companies in the real world of business today.

Hear that interview in its entirety here.

More on Caldicott from the company’s website:

A great grandniece of Thomas Edison and his second wife Mina Miller Edison, Sarah Miller Caldicott has been surrounded by creativity and innovation throughout her life.  When she was seven years old, Sarah learned of her unique relationship to her great aunt Mina Miller, and Mina’s world-famous husband, Thomas Edison.  Curious about why the Edison phonograph and cylindrical records in her home worked so differently from the small plastic record player that spun 45’s and wax LP’s, she wondered, “How did they get this way?”

Intrigued by Sarah went on to learn about the accomplishments of Mina Miller Edison’s father – Sarah’s great, great grandfather, Lewis Miller (1829-1899) – an agricultural equipment inventor whose Buckeye Mower & Reaper dramatically improved the productivity of American farmers in the 1850’s and beyond, later inspiring development of the modern Combine Harvester.  A recipient of 92 patents, Lewis Miller was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2006, and co-founded the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York in 1874 – a place Sarah and her family still visit every year.

Sarah received her MBA  from the Amos Tuck School of Business, and began her 20-year career as a Marketing executive with brand-driven firms including Pepsico and Unilever. For 12 years, Sarah spearheaded domestic and international rollouts of mass brands including Cycle, Suave, Salon Selectives, and Degree. While serving as an International Marketing Director for Unilever’s Helene Curtis subsidiary, Sarah’s teams pioneered the company’s first international relaunch of its flagship Finesse brand across three continents, requiring coordination with global advertising agencies DDB Needham Worldwide and Dentsu.

Desiring to pursue more entrepreneurial projects, in 1998, Sarah established StarWave Associates, a strategic marketing and branding consultancy assisting CEO’s and business owners in transforming the growth of their brands. StarWave clients have included DHL Global Mail, Cox Enterprises, Andrx Pharmaceuticals, Shay Financial Services, and Lucent, as well as numerous entrepreneurial firms.

Co-author of a groundbreaking book on Thomas Edison’s innovation best practices, entitled Innovate Like Edison: The Success System of America’s Greatest Inventor, Sarah speaks to audiences across the country, and leads executive seminars on how to embed Edison’s Five Competencies of Innovation in their organizations.  These competencies propelled Edison to generate a record-breaking 1,093 US patents and 1,293 international patents over 62 successive years.

Sarah also shares with leaders how they can use Edison’s time-tested methods to create innovation literacy in their organizations, as well as develop corporate innovation infrastructure to propel them toward innovation success.  She advises executives and business owners on how to design teams for maximum innovation impact, “re-wire” their cultures to create a 21st century innovation powerhouse, and hire collaborative employees that will thrive in an innovation-driven culture.  Working with the Edison Innovation Literacy Blueprint, Sarah helps each firm build competitive advantage while also creating its own signature innovation style.

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.

By US Daily Review Staff.

What does it take to inspire innovation in 21st century organizations? What are the qualities of a successful innovator?

These are important questions “businesses should ask following the dramatic economic downturns experienced in the first decade of the 21st century. Heralded by many as the fourth economic revolution in human history, we find ourselves standing awkwardly in the Innovation Age” according to the author.

Following the epoch shifts of the Agrarian Age, the Industrial Age, and the Information Age, the Innovation Age commenced just a few years after the turn of the millennium – the same window of time that Sarah Miller Caldicott awakened to an extraordinary innovation twist in her own family tree.

After learning at age 6 that she was a great-grandniece of Thomas Edision, Sarah Miller Caldicott was determined to learn how Edison’s timeless innovation success could teach us to become more effective innovators today.

In conjunction with her speech at the November 4th 2011 TEDx Peachtree Conference in Atlanta, Georgia – Sarah Miller Caldicott discussed her newly released e-book, Inventing the Future: What Would Thomas Edison Be Doing Today? (Wiley; ISBN: 978-1-1182-1986-7; E-Book only; $6.99; November 2011). She explains how Thomas Edison pioneered six industries in less than 35 years through methods Caldicott reveals as Edison’s Five Competencies of Innovation™. These five competencies reveal how Edison created billions of dollars in market value in his lifetime. The core industries Edison created still remain today.

Thomas Edison holds over a thousand patents in his name including the electric light bulb, the phonograph, and motion picture camera. He is considered one of the world’s most prolific inventors with a work ethic and vision for the future that changed the modern world. Imagine what Edison would be possible of if given the current advances in technology.

Inventing the Future examines how Edison would innovate today and reveals steps modern readers can take to utilize his methods. Caldicott offers six proactive concepts highlighting what Edison would be working on in the 21st century. Each concept offers an expansion of actual inventions Edison commercialized in his lifetime. Sarah Miller Caldicott provides a well- researched, intriguing look at how Edison would address the following areas:

•     Sound and entertainment
•     Human Health
•     Alternative Energy
•     Software and 3D imaging
•     Human Intelligence
•     Research and Development

Inventing the Future stimulates an individual’s ability to imagine what’s possible in the future regardless of obstacles or circumstances. It also includes steps anyone can take to start thinking like an innovator, and offers a hands-on view of how creativity and risk-taking come together to design powerful concepts that create new markets.

Never before has there been a time when innovation was more imperative. As nations stand stymied by the challenges of global warming, dwindling fossil fuel reserves, expanding populations, and deep national indebtedness, Caldicott’s e-book provides leaders with the knowledge and inspiration to invent the future, today.

By Isabella Woods, Special for US Daily Review

Inventors create different devices so is it fair for them to be judged against one another especially when they lived in different centuries?

Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison have both been in the limelight recently. Jobs, because he died and was an extremely high profile character in global electronics and Edison, because he invented throughout his working life.

Steve Jobs lived from 1955 to 2011 to the age of 56; Thomas Edison from 1847 to 1931 to the age of 84. The difference in era, finances, culture and population movement show that direct comparison on many levels clearly isn’t possible.

Many Similarities

However, if you study the manner in which the two worked, many similarities seem to emerge, especially when you think about their career paths.

Let’s get the not-so-nice comparisons out of the way. Both Jobs and Edison have been described as difficult and controlling bosses who wouldn’t accept standards below their own from an employee. They both kept an iron grip on all that happened in their work zones. Both spent an inordinate time protecting patents, even those they had no direct use or plans for.

An easy and now amusing contrast starts with Edison’s patent on making movies. Everyone making a movie had to pay Edison a specific amount. This compares well with Apple’s approach to chasing anyone to the extreme over patent litigation if there is the slightest chance a rival has a feature that Apple believes it had a hand in.

Keeping Your Light Bulb and iPhone, Sir?

Edison was the inventor of the light bulb. Although we may have changed to an energy saving model in recent years, we still can’t do without it. Some iPhone users would claim the same. Edison invented both the phonograph and the motion picture camera (hence his grip on people making movies) and is known for improving the telegraph and the telephone. Apple via Jobs has taken the tablet computer and changed it into one of the most useful pieces of equipment available for all ages. It defines how we communicate or it did until Amazon’s Kindle Fire arrived, but that’s another story.

All of Edison’s inventions or advancements came when human lifestyle was evolving quickly and he helped to move it along even faster. Jobs’ iPhone took a useful tool and made it the gadget to hold and use for anyone who could afford one. Apple’s Mac computers are accepted as better machines than anything running Windows, but other software has prevented Apple from completely taking over the computing world.

While Edison invented the phonograph, Jobs gave us the iPod and the iTouch. Could we have got to the latter if we hadn’t found the former? Is it Edison who was the real inventor and Jobs the man who took good ideas and made them almost perfect, creating objects we can’t put down or are not prepared to do without?

How Long Will The Memory Last?

Clearly, Edison invented useful tools that made everyday life so much easier. His ideas have become natural in the way we conduct our daily lives. In a hundred, or even two hundred years, we’ll still need some kind of electricity and electric light. Will the people of 3011 be updating software on their iPhone model number 88? Perhaps the iPhone will be developed in ways we can’t imagine now. In a thousand years’ time maybe people will look back at Steve Jobs’ era and say he innovated and changed the way people lived in 2011, and was the catalyst for the way people communicated in 3011. After all, Edison didn’t really think about HD television or electricity on the moon, but they result from his inventions.

Perhaps the best comparison of the two men is how they affected other people. In the final analysis most of the people that worked with them wanted to; most wanted to stay for life and wouldn’t consider hiring a moving company. Most wanted to be part of human evolution. They both produced items we can’t do without. Some will argue that we can live without electricity and iPhones, but try taking them away from their owners. That’s why the grey haired geniuses – another trait they shared – will both be in the history books of the future.

Isabella Woods is a professional writer for numerous websites and publications.