Plugging the Leak in America’s Innovation Ecosystem:
Could America Produce Another Thomas Edison Today? 
 

By Sarah Miller Caldicott 

Dozens of articles have been written over the past few years questioning whether the U.S. is losing its innovation edge. As the world’s innovation leader for over 200 years, America has long provided a model for how to successfully drive the innovation process.

As a great grandniece of Thomas Edison, business owner, and co-author of the first book to explore Edison’s world-changing innovation methods, I’ve had a chance to review innovation success factors in great depth. In my travels around the country training innovators in today’s workforce and – hopefully – inspiring innovators of tomorrow, I’m often asked the question “Could America produce another Edison today?”

Despite shortfalls that have emerged in America’s innovation landscape since the advent of the Internet, I still believe the answer to this question is “Yes.” But I think it will be an uphill battle. And I think it will come only with extraordinary effort, and a change in the way we think about our nation’s talent pool.

We Must Ask Different Questions About Innovation
Inspiring “a generation of Edison’s” outfitted for the global economy means we need to ask a new question. It is not: “Is America innovative enough?” I believe the more fundamental question is, “Are we educating America’s innovators for today and tomorrow?”

Without a fundamental change in our approach to public education, the ability of our talent pool to deliver bright students interested in the sciences, technology, and new problem-solving approaches will continue to decline. A first tier talent pool remains fundamental to our innovation leadership in the world. Without a fresh look at how we educate our children from kindergarten all the way through our globally esteemed graduate schools, we will become a second-tier nation. We need an approach that will not only deliver 21st century Edisons, but the cadres of collaborators that enabled Edison to become a world-class innovator.

Eight Factors Critical to America’s Innovation Ecosystem
The American innovation ecosystem is unique in the world. Nowhere else on the planet – not in Europe, not in Japan, not in China – can you find the singular combination of factors that have allowed innovation to thrive within our borders since the founding of this nation.

Eight factors drive America’s innovation engine, each of which I will describe briefly. One huge success factor, Research and Development, was invented by Thomas Edison himself. Without America’s uniquely integrated innovation ecosystem, however, even a genius like Edison could not have successfully pioneered six new-to-the-world industries in less than 40 years.

What Makes America’s Innovation Ecosystem Tick?
Much of what has been written about America’s innovation success comes from the annals of academia. But the most powerful sources, I believe, are historians and economists from other nations who have observed our country’s success from abroad. The most influential of these is Pulitzer prize-winning author Sir Harold Evans, who wrote “The American Century” and “They Made America.” Based on Evans’ analysis, combined with three years of research I conducted with the world’s leading authority on Thomas Edison at Rutgers University – Dr. Paul Israel - I’ve identified eight factors as drivers of America’s unparalleled innovation ecosystem.

1) Protection of Intellectual Property: For all its faults, the United States Patent and Trademark Office provides fundamental protection for ideas that can lead to profitable commerce. The USPTO is still the place where innovators from around the world want their ideas registered. The lack of intellectual property protection in RDE’s (rapidly developing economies) like China remains a key sticking point for long term innovation success. Even though Edison railed against the USPTO in his day – and tried to reform it, unsuccessfully – his 1,093 U.S. patents have generated market value estimated to exceed $1 trillion globally today.

2) Democratic Form of Government: Democracy helps ensure that no matter what station in life you start from, you can express your ideas freely through science, literature, and many other avenues. Edison was born into a lower middle class family, lived in the rural Midwest until he was 15, and was the youngest of 7 children. And yet through grit, persistence, and a keen sense of curiosity, he rose to become a world-renowned figure following his invention of the phonograph at age of 30.

3) Open Banking System and Capital Markets: Although as this article goes to press the U.S. has been rocked by mind-bending shifts in the landscape of its financial industry, America possesses huge capital markets as well as laws which require financial transparency. Obtaining money for ideas - and fueling those ideas with credit - were fundamental to Edison’s success throughout his 62-year career, and are fundamental to today’s U.S.-based innovators as well.

4) Research & Development Infrastructure: Edison’s Menlo Park laboratory, opened in 1876, was the world’s first research and development facility. Edison’s systematic approach to innovation allowed him to successfully pioneer commercial ideas in multiple industries from one building. He later opened the world’s first industrial research laboratory at his 15-acre West Orange laboratory, combining manufacturing with basic research as well as applied research. Although some R&D activity is indeed heading offshore, America’s fundamental R&D prowess can be seen in university labs, as well as in over 700 national labs and labs funded within private industry. America today supports funding for 8 different R&D sectors, more than any other nation in the world including Japan.

5) Support for the Entrepreneur: The ability for individuals to strike out on their own and pursue a promising new idea is perhaps the single most important factor distinguishing America’s innovation ecosystem from approaches used in other nations. As sophisticated as Europe’s and Japan’s economies are, they do not foster entrepreneurship in a fundamental way. China has caught “entrepreneur fever,” but levels of support for entrepreneurs – through innovation centers, incubators, and targeted education or training resources – is nowhere near the levels provided in the U.S.

6) Venture Capital: More and more venture funds are being established in international markets. This is a good thing. It allows investment moneys to flow to more places around the world. But U.S.-based venture capital remains a fundamental resource available to entrepreneurs in America today. Although he largely invested his own funds in his inventions, the ever-entrepreneurial Edison tapped venture capital from wealthy investors including J.P. Morgan and other industrial magnates.

7) Belief in the Future: This is a U.S. innovation ecosystem success factor which most historians and economists miss. America was founded on the fundamental belief that a better life could be created here, a life of religious freedom and prosperity, a place where the future would grow brighter and brighter over time. In most modern economies, however, focus is still placed on past achievements and past victories. Edison focused on the future, and on “bringing out the secrets of nature and applying them for the happiness of man.” He knew that progress was a function of applying our intellect – creatively – to the problems of tomorrow.

Public Education Is the Leak in America’s Innovation Ecosystem
If Edison were alive today, he would warn that our innovation ecosystem is leaking badly in one critical area, the one that most significantly impacts our future competitiveness: our talent pool. Without stronger talent, and without the means to continue driving the 7 other components of our innovation ecosystem, America will become a second-tier nation. Weakness in the 8th critical factor - our public education system - is our biggest leak.

Designed in an era when the U.S. was the manufacturing powerhouse of the world, the foundation of our public education system has been terrific for advancing linear thinking, fact-based learning, and operating within a defined structure. These were all critically important criteria for success in the Industrial Age.

But in the Information Age, although basic facts remain important, knowledge is doubling every 3 years. It’s critical to help students learn to see patterns, to become whole-brain thinkers, and understand how to solve problems creatively when all the facts aren’t available. Transforming data into knowledge – through the use of creativity and innovative thinking – is paramount.

A New Model for Education Is Needed in the U.S.
To regain our footing as the world’s most envied public education system, we need to entertain new models for education. Edison’s teachers thought his brain was “addled” because he asked so many questions. He lasted less than 3 months in a traditional classroom. Fortunately, Edison’s mother – a retired schooled teacher – home schooled Edison and instilled in him a lifelong love of learning.

While home schooling is clearly not the answer for every child, we need an educational structure that:

• More deeply recognizes and rewards the role of creativity, discovery, and whole-brain thinking in the classroom.
• Offers more of its curricula based on learning style so that visual learners, auditory learners, and kinesthetic learners all benefit. Today’s instruction is primarily geared toward visual learners. Edison was a kinesthetic learner and was primarily able to learn by taking things apart and putting them back together
• Offers more “hands-on” learning opportunities, particularly in the sciences. Today’s students often learn with their hands through text messaging, extensive laptop usage, and video game play. Studies suggest that the percentage of kinesthetic learners in the population is rising significantly as a result.
• Offers more team-based projects and mixed-age classrooms in selected subjects where students can advance at their own pace. Team projects teach collaboration skills and advance students’ abilities to deal with complex concepts, both critical to success in the Information Age.
• Creates a public school structure with fewer administrators as a percentage of its total headcount, and more teachers. Recent statistics suggest that over 30% of our current educational structure consists of administrative positions. Funding for teacher training should come in part by reducing administrative head count.
• Attracts and retains bright, motivated teachers who not only want to teach math, science, and technology-based subjects, but who are actually trained in these subjects. Recent figures from the National Center for Education Statistics indicate that science and math certifications for middle school teachers are particularly lacking, with 42% of physical science teachers and 30% of life sciences teachers neither certified nor holding majors in these fields. Without well-trained, passionate teachers leading courses in this critical age bracket, our students will prematurely opt-out of science or math as a potential interest area, or career path.

In this century, jobs will migrate to where the knowledge workers are. Let’s put creativity and innovative thinking back in the classroom, and change our public educational system to meet the challenges of the global economy and the Information Age. Our nation’s innovation competitiveness depends on it.


About the author: Sarah Miller Caldicott is a great grandniece of Thomas Edison, an MBA, innovation consultant, and a 25-year marketing veteran. She is also co-author of the first book ever written about Edison’s innovation methods, entitled: “Innovate Like Edison: The Five-Step System for Breakthrough Business Success.” (Dutton Penguin, October 2008). She lives in Oak Park and can be reached at scaldicott@powerpatterns.com.