Byron's Babbles

Collaboration

By David Nielson

There is a notion that Edison was a master inventor who wore a lab coat and sat in his lab all day working alone and coming up with amazing inventions. This is far from the truth; in addition to being a great inventor, he was also a master collaborator. 

Edison brought in hundreds of collaborators to help create prototypes and commercialize his inventions—people such as investors, engineers, and others to help him develop and promote the products. This led to creating more than 200 companies. In 1890, Edition established the Edison Electric Company, bringing together his various businesses. 

When Edison heard that Alexander Graham Bell was going to commercialize his phonograph and cylinders, Edison knew it would make his technology yesterday’s news. He did not tackle this problem alone; he gathered a team, and for three days they worked on a technology that would jump over Bell’s—and they succeeded.

The thing about entrepreneurs is they are fantastic at creating ideas, but they sometimes fall short by not following through and implementing the ideas. That is one of the reasons why they have to learn to collaborate with others. 

“Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprang up.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.,
The Poet at the Breakfast Table

There are many other examples in history. Consider the teams that worked on putting a man on the moon. It took hundreds of a variety of people and talents to build the craft. They needed all sorts of engineers to figure out the trajectory, communications, and more to take a team into space, fly them to the moon, land and then walk on the moon, return to the craft, fly back to Earth, and finally safely land. It required tremendous collaboration to make that happen. 

A great movie, Hidden Figures, emphasizes the critical role of three women doing very important math and technical work to support astronaut John Glenn’s flight, without which the flight would not have been possible. Again, great collaboration to accomplish
a common goal—a common purpose.

About David Nielson
David Nielson brings over four decades of corporate, Fortune 500, and private consulting experience in organizational change management, leadership development, and training. David has helped guide large-scale change initiatives and business strategy driven by ERP, mergers, restructuring, and the need for cultural change. He’s been a featured and frequent speaker at PMI, Project World, Chief Executive Network, Management Resources Association, TEC, IABC, Training Director’s Forum, and the Alliance of Organizational Systems Designers.

David has worked around the world delivering training and consulting Services. In all those years, those countries, those clients; David has observed, learned and collected great experiences and teaching points. David decided to work on a way to “give back.”  His latest book, The 9 Dimensions of Conscious Success helps readers identify their definition of purpose professionally and personally to achieve conscious success.