Innovate Like Edison:
Five Competencies that
Generate Breakthrough Results

It’s extremely difficult to be ‘creative on demand,’ yet that is what CEOs are asking of product developers today. Ironically, the pressure to innovate may even cause the reverse effect!

If your team is feeling the strain, we invite you to participate in a special audio-session designed to inspire breakthrough thinking and help overcome obstacles quickly.

Innovate Like Edison: Five Competencies that Generate Breakthrough Results, will be led by Sarah Miller Caldicott, a descendant of Thomas Edison, who has identified and codified the methods that propelled Edison to generate a record-breaking 1,093 patents over 60 successive years, pioneering innovations which still remain with us today! In this audio session, Caldicott will share her insights on Edison’s Five Competencies of Innovation™ and how you can apply them in your organization.

Specifically you will learn about these five competencies:

1. Unstoppable Persistence

• How "failures" make success inevitable as long as you persist
• How to view all outcomes as neutral and rapidly move to the next good idea rather than linger on dead ends.

2. Kaleidoscopic Thinking

• How to see patterns (vs. theorems or laws) which lead to more fruitful experimentation
• How to sidestep "traditional" ways of thinking
• To use visual metaphors and juxtapose known elements with ideas that are still evolving

3. Balancing the Creative and the Practical

• How to quiet the mind to allow the unconscious to communicate with the conscious, exchanging information critical to the creative process
• Edison’s techniques for revitalizing energy, incubating ideas, and generating fresh perspectives.

4. Build High-Performance Collaborative Teams

• How successful companies are tapping collaborative networks to activate their vision

5. Market-Moving

• How to assess the market potential for inventions
• Leveraging the power of a brand name (Edison) to “move markets”

Invite your whole team to join you - the fee is the same as long as you are on one line, just put it on speakerphone!

Sarah Caldicott
Founder and President
StarWave Associates

Sarah Miller Caldicott is the Founder and President of StarWave Associates. A great grandniece of Thomas Edison and his second wife Mina Miller Edison, Sarah Miller Caldicott has been engaged in creativity and innovation throughout her life. Motivated by a family history of invention dating back to the 1850’s, Sarah began her 20-year career as a Marketing executive in the Fortune 500, working with major brand-driven firms including Quaker Oats and Unilever.

For 12 years, Sarah spearheaded domestic and international rollouts of global brands including Cycle, Salon Selectives, Suave, Finesse and Degree. While serving as International Marketing Director for Unilever’s Helene Curtis subsidiary, Sarah’s teams successfully spearheaded 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. In addition to strengthening the Finesse brand, the international relaunch efforts undertaken by Sarah's teams led to breakthroughs in packaging, fragrance, and product formulations later adopted by the domestic arm of Helene Curtis.

In 1998, Sarah established StarWave Associates, a strategic marketing and branding consultancy assisting CEO’s and business owners in transforming the profitability of their brands. StarWave clients include DHL, Philip Morris USA, Cox Communications, Andrx Pharmaceuticals, and Lucent. Currently co-authoring a book on Thomas Edison’s innovation process slated for release by Putnam Publishing in September 2007, Sarah also speaks and leads executive seminars on Edison’s Five Competencies of Innovation . These competencies propelled Edison to generate a record-breaking 1,093 US patents over more than 60 successive years. The working title of the book is, Innovate Like Edison: Five Success Secrets for Generating Breakthrough Products and Profits in the Global Marketplace.

A Florida state champion Toastmaster, Sarah captivates audiences with her unique combination of business content and humor. Sarah holds a BA from Wellesley College, and an MBA from the Amos Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.