Tag Archives: Neal Thornberry

Sci-Tech

Thomas Edison’s Creepy Talking Doll Not The Best Christmas Gift Idea In 1890

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Like other authors who write about innovation, I love Thomas Edison stories. He was an inventive genius and found the code to serial innovation more than 120 years ago.

That code is still in use by companies like IDEO who’ve learned his lessons and both improved upon them and added to them. But the basic core is still the same.

Less well known is Edison’s entrepreneurial side.  He put financiers, government officials, politicians and inventors like himself together in an inspired coalition that built the first electrical grid in New York City. After all, what good is a light bulb if you don’t have a source of electricity to power it?

But his inventions were not always successful, nor were his attempts to market and sell them.

For example, very few people today know about Edison’s talking doll. Expected to sell during the 1890 Christmas season, she was a marketing failure.

Creepy even for the 19th Century

I think she looks like the “Bride of Chucky” and is more than a little spooky. Talking, animated objects are commonplace today, but Edison was the first to have the idea and execute it.

Creeped out? Here's some of the dolls Bing suggest after searching "Creepy Doll". Click image to hear Edison's doll speak.
Click on any  image to hear Edison’s doll speak.

What gave her voice was a tiny version of the phonograph – another of his inventions. He thought it would be novel to make a talking doll and hoped it would catch on. The doll market was already thriving, so a talking doll could potentially reach the top of the heap.

But not all of Edison’s creativity turned into cash, and his Bride of Chucky was a dismal failure. The little talking machine went inside the doll with the handle protruding from her back. Edison produced 2,500 of the dolls but only 500 sold. They were $10 each — two weeks of the average pay back in 1890 – and many of those sold were returned for quality problems.

Edison quickly turned his back on her.

I particularly like this story because it shows the critical difference between innovation and entrepreneurship. Great ideas are not always great opportunities. Opportunities possess five characteristics that differentiate them from great ideas:

Durability – They keep creating value over time.

Sustainability – The organization has the willpower, manpower and resources to sustain the idea through failure, rethinking and reformulation.

Defensibility – The potential return on investment makes it worth the time, resources and risk that accompany all new ventures, thus making it worth doing this over doing something else.

It creates value – It creates value for the person willing to reach into their pockets for money to pay for the intangible form and thus it creates value for the company.

It is compelling – The Innovation is differentiated in some critical way that makes a customer segment just have to have it.

Entrepreneurs differ substantially from innovators because they have the discipline to determine whether a great idea is also a great opportunity.  This takes a lot of work, failure, rethinking and, most of all, passion to get you through all of this vetting. Many innovators lose interest after the idea stage and don’t understand that innovation without value creation may be fun – but it’s also folly.

Edison, like many other inventors, fell in love with his baby and he built a bunch of them, assuming a slam dunk in the market. In fact, these dolls were not just spooky looking, they were big and heavy and cost a lot of money.

Edison’s enthusiasm for his ability to make a talking doll was not counterbalanced by the discipline necessary to determine whether the idea was just that or a real opportunity.  He was so eager to produce them that he didn’t ask if the market wanted such an invention and at what price.

I am sure that Edison was OK with failure, as he once said that he had not failed in his efforts to create the light bulb, but rather found a thousand ways that didn’t work.  For the Silo, Neal Thornberry, Ph.D.

 

Supplemental- Bride of Chucky http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144120/

Culture

How To Present New Ideas To Your Intimidating Boss

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Not all ideas are 'shot down' by an intimidating boss- Albert Einstein's formal letter paved the way to American atom bomb research.
Not all ideas are ‘shot down’ by an intimidating boss- Albert Einstein’s formal letter paved the way to American atom bomb research.

Everyone says they want innovation in their organization, but when an ambitious employee offers it to a Boss or CEO, for example, the idea is often shot down, says Neal Thornberry, Ph.D., faculty director for innovation initiatives at the Naval Postgraduate School in California.

“Senior leaders often miss the value-creating potential of a new concept because they either don’t take the time to really listen and delve into it, or the innovating employee presents it in the wrong way,” says Thornberry, who recently published “Innovation Judo,” (www.NealThornberry.com), based on his years of experience teaching innovation at Babson College and advising an array of corporate clients, from the Ford Co. and IBM to Cisco Systems. 

Neal Thornberry: " Innovation should be presented as opportunities, not ideas. Opportunities have gravitas while ideas do not!”
Neal Thornberry: ” Innovation should be presented as opportunities, not ideas. Opportunities have gravitas while ideas do not!”

Thornberry outlines a template for innovation that works:

1 Intention: Once the “why” is answered, leaders have the beginnings of a legitimate roadmap to innovation’s fruition. This is no small task and requires some soul searching.

“I once worked with an executive committee, and I got six different ideas for what ‘innovation’ meant,” he says. “One wanted new products, another focused on creative cost-cutting, and the president wanted a more innovative culture. The group needed to agree on their intent before anything else.”

2 Infrastructure: This is where you designate who is responsible for what. It’s tough, because the average employee will not risk new responsibility and potential risk without incentive. Some companies create units specifically focused on innovation, while others try to change the company culture in order to foster innovation throughout.  “Creating a culture takes too long,” Thornberry says. “Don’t wait for that.”

3 Investigation: What do you know about the problem? IDEO may be the world’s premier organization for investigating innovative solutions. Suffice to say that the organization doesn’t skimp on collecting and analyzing data. At this point, data collection is crucial, whereas brainstorming often proves to be a waste of time if the participants come in with the same ideas, knowledge and opinions that they had last week with no new learning in their pockets.

4 Ideation: The fourth step is also the most fun and, unfortunately, is the part many companies leap to. This is dangerous because you may uncover many exciting and good ideas, but if the right context and focus aren’t provided up front, and team members cannot get on the same page, then a company is wasting its time. That is why intent must be the first step for any company seeking to increase innovation. Innovation should be viewed as a set of tools or processes, and not a destination.

If you’re gonna ‘demo’ your idea you better have practiced and perfected your routine before showing your boss-

5 Identification: Here’s where the rubber meets the road on innovation. Whereas the previous step was creative, now logic and subtraction must be applied to focus on a result. Again, ideas are great, but they must be grounded in reality. An entrepreneurial attitude is required here, one that enables the winnowing of ideas, leaving only those with real value-creating potential.

“Innovation without the entrepreneurial mindset is fun but folly,” Thornberry notes.

6 Infection: Does anyone care about what you’ve come up with? Will excitement spread during this infection phase? Now is the time to find out. Pilot testing, experimentation and speaking directly with potential customers begin to give you an idea of how innovative and valuable an idea is. This phase is part selling, part research and part science. If people can’t feel, touch or experience your new idea in part or whole, they probably won’t get it. This is where the innovator has a chance to reshape their idea into an opportunity, mitigate risk, assess resistance and build allies for their endeavor.

7 Implementation/Integration: While many talk about this final phase, they often fail to address the integration part. Implementation refers to tactics that are employed in order to put an idea into practice. This is actually a perilous phase because, in order for implementation to be successful, the idea must first be successfully integrated with other activities in the business and aligned with strategy. An innovation, despite its support from the top, can still fail if a department cannot work with it.

For the Silo, Neil Thornberry.

Working 9 to 5? Think about the best times to approach your boss.
Working 9 to 5? Think about the best times to approach your boss.

Neal Thornberry, Ph.D., is the founder and CEO of IMSTRAT, LLC a consulting firm that specializes in helping private and public sector organizations develop innovation strategies. A respected thought leader in innovation, Thornberry is a highly sought-after international speaker and consultant. He  also serves as the faculty director for innovation initiatives at the Center for Executive Education at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. Thornberry, author of “InnovationJudo:Disarming Roadblocks & Blockheads on the Path to Creativity”, holds a doctorate in organizational psychology and specializes in innovation, corporate entrepreneurship, leadership and organizational transformation.