Midnight Lunch offers a vision for

how collaboration teams can operate

today

Collaboration serves as the backbone,

the sinews, the ligaments that allow

innovation to advance, not stall out

Collaboration enabled Thomas

Edison’s innovation colossus to

flourish. Midnight Lunch reveals

how you can use collaboration to

power innovation success in the

digital era

Book Overview

Gravity is a unique and pervasive

force in the universe

Though it holds the power to shape

planets, stars, and solar systems, we

often take gravity for granted

It operates in the background

Gravity

Like gravity, collaboration is a force that constantly

surrounds us, yet is rarely noticed

Like gravity, collaboration is a subtle yet pervasive

force that lies at the heart of what shapes teams and

organizations

Collaboration

But now, our understanding of

collaboration is changing. It can

no longer be a background force...

Center Stage

…Collaboration is about to take

This combination of people

and technology will set in

motion a wave of

collaboration unprecedented

in human history

Between 2010 and 2020, a record

1 billion working-age adults will

enter the global workforce

Uniquely, a majority of this new

workforce will have access to

mobile phones and smart devices

One Billion in One Decade

Future Factors

1) staying relevant

2) innovating

3) attracting and retaining talent

Three factors will differentiate companies and

governments that thrive in the coming era:

Collaboration is essential to all three

To thrive in this newly collaborative environment –

often dubbed the Innovation Age – individuals and

organizations must re-skill themselves to align with

these three mandates, or fade into irrelevance

How can we create the foundations for

collaboration to thrive, especially in our digital

era?

Challenge

What can we do to

nourish collaboration as a

central force in our

organizations now,

harnessing it in a way

that creates value?

Starting Point We can look to the revolutionary practices of Thomas

Edison – one of the world’s greatest innovators – for

collaboration approaches that can be translated for the

digital era… indeed, the Innovation Age

Thomas Edison

pioneered 6 industries

in less than 35 years…

a feat which has yet to

be repeated

Pioneer

Document duplication…1873

Telecommunications…1876

Recorded sound…1877

Incandescent electric light and power…1879

Motion pictures…1897

Portable power…1903

All 6 of these industries remain

in existence today:

As of 1910, the patents and

industries Edison and his

teams established were valued

at $6.7 billion, or roughly $100

billion today

Impact

The ripple effect of Edison’s

innovations since his lifetime

exceeds $1,000,000,000,000 globally

There is a great deal we can learn

from Edison about value creation

By studying the core components of

his collaboration methods, we can

translate them for the 21st century

Learning

True Collaboration True Collaboration

“When you honor me, you

are also honoring the vast

army of workers but for

whom my work would have

gone for nothing.”

- Thomas Edison

Edison could not have created billions of

dollars in market value without the power of

“true collaboration.”

More than Teamwork Collaboration is not the same thing as teamwork.

Teamwork involves just “doing your part”

Collaboration involves

engaging the unique strengths

of each team participant,

creating a multiplying

force…not just an additive one

True collaboration creates

knowledge assets

These knowledge assets can

be reshaped and

reconfigured over

time…yielding a sustaining

engine for value creation,

and innovation

Knowledge Assets

Collaboration is a Continuum

For Edison, true collaboration operates as a continuum,

not a stop-start process

True collaboration balances discovery learning and

performance. It moves beyond tasks.

Let’s examine Thomas Edison’s Four Phases of True

Collaboration™, and identify how each phase can be

applied now…in the Innovation Age

Edison’s Four Phases

Ensure each team includes a

diversity of expertise, talents,

and thinking styles.

CAPACITY Assemble small teams of 2 to 8 people

Edison created invisible glue between the employees on

these small collaboration teams through a process his

Menlo Park workers called “midnight lunch”

Midnight Lunch

After a full workday, Edison

would sometimes return to

the lab after dinner with his

family, and check in on key

experiments that were

taking place

He encouraged others who

stayed late to share their

experiments with each other,

and exchange their expertise

Making of a Midnight Lunch

At 9 pm, after roughly 2 hours of dialogue, Edison ordered

in food and beverages for everyone from a local tavern

The assembled cadre of workers

hung out with Edison for about an

hour to eat, sing songs, tell stories,

and play musical instruments

They called this “midnight lunch.”

After midnight lunch, everyone

went back to work until the wee

hours of the morning

Through midnight lunches, Edison

transformed employees into

colleagues. Colleagues feel part of a

larger whole. They feel connected

beyond social standing or education

Employees Become Colleagues

Edison was rarely content

accepting things as they were,

preferring to change the playing

field entirely, or improve what

already existed to deliver new

value

Edison savored the creation of

new context for working and

thinking. Through collaboration,

he asked different questions than

his competitors did, yielding

breakthrough insights and unique

experiments

Phase Two CONTEXT

In Phase 2, instead of brainstorming,

Edison’s collaboration teams

employed analogical thinking… the

process of comparing two things

that seem unlike and identifying

how they are alike

This activates the brain’s innate

creating centers, yielding fruitful

questions, experiments and patterns

In creating context, Edison also

triumphed through the development

of prototypes, which provide physical

and visual feedback to the brain, and

enable rapid learning cycles

Analogical Thinking

In Phase 2 Edison also embraced

casual discussion…a means for the

brain to organize and

reorganize concepts without

locking down on them too soon

This helps create new scenarios

without a concern for “being

right” or looking foolish

Through casual conversations,

individuals are encouraged to

contribute their best stuff, and not

hold unique knowledge in reserve

Casual Discussion

Phase Three

Physicist David Bohm describes coherence as “sharing a

common content.” It is an organic rather than a static force

Coherence can be present even if there is some “noise” in the

environment

COHERENCE

Coherence enables teams to

stay together and remain

functional even when there

is disagreement, or when

obstacles arise

Just as we experience today,

in Edison’s time resource

constraints often strain the

coherence of a team

Inspirational leadership is a

key factor which helps

collaboration teams continue to

move forward

Coherence and Inspiration

Inspirational leaders like Edison, or Steve Jobs, help teams

see the big picture. They lay out a vision of where they’re

headed even if the road to achieving it seems uncertain

Edison helped teams define how progress could be gauged

New definitions of progress are emerging today as

Generation Y enters the workforce. Creating measures of

progress that motivate your entire team is essential

New Definitions of Progress

Edison served as a catalyst for

inspirational leaders to arise in

his labs as well as his factories

Edison also provided shoulder-to-

shoulder leadership by sharing

insights, stories, and helping to

synthesize the knowledge assets

from one team with another

In developing coherence, Edison

uniquely groomed new leaders

and cross-trained his workers

Grooming New Leaders

Phase Four COMPLEXITY

As never before, manmade complex

systems surround us in daily life.

Examples include familiar systems

like the Stock Market and the

Internet

But now, we have new

manmade systems like social

networks, and realtime data

gathering from smart devices,

driving new forms of complexity

Edison viewed complex systems as a

central part of collaboration and

innovation. Rather than running

from complexity, he embraced it

Teams as Complex Systems

Each of Edison’s collaboration teams included all three

facets which define complexity as we know it today:

1. Multiplicity – the number of potentially interacting

elements in a system

2. Interdependence – the level of connection among the

elements in the system

3. Diversity - the degree of

uniqueness or heterogeneity of

elements in the system

By drawing from different disciplines, each small team

Edison formed represented a complex adaptive system

Edison built his teams in smart layers rather than as

hierarchies. This allowed collaboration to operate more

rapidly and be productive – even without computers

Smart layers engage rapid research, analysis, and synthesis

Today, we can turn to social networks and digital

technologies as tools to navigate complexity inherent in

collaboration, and innovation.

Smart Layers Rather than Hierarchies

By engaging the practice of midnight lunch, and applying

the 4 Phases of True Collaboration™ -- Capacity, Context,

Coherence, and Complexity -- your collaborations can be a

pervasive force powering innovation, anywhere

Begin today

Conclusion

Book: bit.ly/VY7GkP

Website: www.powerpatterns.com

Email: info@powerpatterns.com

Twitter: @sarahcaldicott

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sarahcaldicott

Facebook: www.facebook.com/powerpatternsofinnovation

Sarah Miller Caldicott is a great grandniece of Thomas Edison. She works with

organizations that want to bring innovation practices to the center of their business

culture, driving new levels of growth and relevance.

Sarah is a highly sought after speaker and content developer on the subjects of

enterprise innovation and collaboration. Sarah offers consulting services which

apply Thomas Edison’s world-changing innovation methods in the digital era.

About the Author

Sarah's books have been featured in The New York Times,

Fortune Small Business, Fast Company, and USA Today.

Sarah has also appeared as an innovation expert on PBS

television, CNBC, the Fox Business Network, and NPR.

Her clients include Intel, Motorola, Microsoft, John Deere,

Emerson, Aon, and the Mayo Clinic among many others.

Sarah received a BA from Wellesley College, where she was

named a Wellesley College Scholar. She holds an MBA

from the Amos Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

CEO, The Power Patterns of Innovation

7115 North Ave, Suite 312

Oak Park, IL 60302

Phone: +1-708-445-9335

http://www.powerpatterns.com