"Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration." Thomas Alva Edison

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EDISON AWARDS
STEERING COMMITTEE

The role of the steering committee is two-fold. Senior executives with diverse marketing, scientific, and business backgrounds serve on the Edison Steering Committee to monitor the development and successful launch of innovative products each year.

The Steering Committee is responsible for selecting the Edison Achievement Award winners. They review biographies, practices and impact of nominees and select individuals who are on the cutting edge of innovation in an attempt to nominate distinguished innovators.

For the EDISON BEST NEW PRODUCT AWARDS™, the Steering Committee receives and reviews each application selecting only those they believe merit consideration for the EDISON BEST NEW PRODUCT AWARDS™. The applicants that are approved are put on a comprehensive ballot is compiled by the Steering Committee. The ballot is mailed to over 2,000 experienced senior business executives throughout the nation. The ballots are tabulated and the finalists notified. This process is similar to the one used by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science.

Steering Committee Members:
Dr. Paul B. Israel
Director and General Editor, The Thomas A. Edison Papers at Rutgers University.
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Dr. Robert S. Langer
Institute Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, MIT.
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Dr. M. Krishna Erramilli
Professor of Marketing and Director of IIT Stuart MBA Program, Illinois Institute of Technology.
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Calvin Hodock
Former Chairman of the Board of the American Marketing Association.
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Thomas K. Stat
Executive Director of New Business Development, IDEO.
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Sarah Miller Caldicott
a great grandniece of Thomas Edison and co-author of Innovate Like Edison.
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Tom Cosgrove
Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President Discovery Channel
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Biographies:

Dr. Paul B. Israel
Director and General Editor, The Thomas A. Edison Papers at Rutgers University

Paul Israel is director and editor of the Thomas A. Edison Papers at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Dr. Israel has been with the Edison Papers since 1980 and became director in 2002 after serving as managing editor of the book edition. He is author of Edison: A Life of Invention (John Wiley & Sons, 1998), winner of the 2000 Dexter Prize of the Society for the History of Technology. While working on this book he received an Interpretive Research Grant from the Program in Humanities, Science and Technology of the National Endowment for the Humanities as well as additional funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. His other books are From Machine Shop to Industrial Laboratory: Telegraphy and the Changing Context of American Invention, 1830-1920 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992) and Edison's Electric Light: Biography of an Invention (Rutgers University Press, 1986) with coauthor Robert Friedel. He has delivered numerous professional papers and given public presentations and interviews on Edison 's career and on the subjects of invention and innovation. His current project looks at the relationship between intellectual property and technology.

Dr. Robert S. Langer
Sc.D., Institute Professor, Dept of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Robert S. Langer is one of 13 Institute Professors (the highest honor awarded to a faculty member) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Dr. Langer has written approximately 1,000 articles. He also has more than 600 issued or pending patents worldwide. Dr. Langer’s patents have been licensed or sublicensed to over 200 pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology and medical device companies. He served as a member of the United States Food and Drug Administration’s SCIENCE Board, the FDA’s highest advisory board, from 1995 - 2002 and as its Chairman from 1999-2002.

Dr. Langer has received over 160 major awards including the 2006 United States National Medal of Science; the Charles Stark Draper Prize, considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for engineers and the 2008 Millennium Prize, the world’s largest technology prize. He is the also the only engineer to receive the Gairdner Foundation International Award; 70 recipients of this award have subsequently received a Nobel Prize. Among numerous other awards Langer has received are the Dickson Prize for Science (2002), Heinz Award for Technology, Economy and Employment (2003), the Harvey Prize (2003), the John Fritz Award (2003) (given previously to inventors such as Thomas Edison and Orville Wright), the General Motors Kettering Prize for Cancer Research (2004), the Dan David Prize in Materials Science (2005), the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research (2005), the largest prize in the U.S. for medical research, induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame (2006), the Max Planck Research Award (2008) and the Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research (2008). In 1998, he re- ceived the Lemelson-MIT prize, the world’s largest prize for invention for being “one of history’s most prolific inventors in medicine.” In 1989 Dr. Langer was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and in 1992 he was elected to both the National Academy of Engineering and to the National Academy of Sciences. He is one of very few people ever elected to all three United States National Academies and the youngest in history (at age 43) to ever receive this distinction.

Forbes Magazine (1999) and Bio World (1990) have named Dr. Langer as one of the 25 most important individuals in biotechnology in the world. Discover Magazine (2002) named him as one of the 20 most important people in this area. Forbes Magazine (2002) selected Dr. Langer as one of the 15 innovators world wide who will reinvent our future. Time Magazine and CNN (2001) named Dr. Langer as one of the 100 most important people in America and one of the 18 top people in science or medicine in America (America’s Best). Parade Magazine (2004) selected Dr. Langer as one of 6 “Heroes whose research may save your life.” Dr. Langer has received honorary doctorates from Yale University, the ETH (Switzerland), the Technion (Israel), the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel), the Universite Catholique de Louvain (Belgium), the University of Liverpool (England), the University of Nottingham (England), Albany Medical College, the Pennsylvania State University, Northwestern University and Uppsala University (Sweden). He received his Bachelor’s Degree from Cornell University in 1970 and his Sc.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1974, both in Chemical Engineering.

Dr. M. Krishna Erramilli
Professor of Marketing and Director of IIT Stuart MBA Program, Illinois Institute of Technology.

Dr. Erramilli’s 30 years of professional experience spans North America, Africa and Asia. He worked in industry in India and Nigeria and taught in universities in the US and Singapore. Prior to joining Stuart, he was a faculty member and Associate Dean in the Nanyang Business School, Singapore, which is one of the largest business schools in Asia. Its MBA program has been consistently ranked among the top 70 programs in the world and is ranked #2 in Asia.

Over the years, he has taught various courses related to marketing and international business at the undergraduate, masters and doctoral levels. He has also supervised several masters and doctoral dissertations. Dr. Erramilli’s doctoral work represented a pioneering analysis of the globalization of service firms. His work in this area has been cited extensively. Recently, he was recognized as the #2 most cited author in Global Strategy Research. He has published more than 25 articles in some of the world’s leading journals, like the Journal of Marketing, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of International Marketing, Journal of Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Business Research, Management International Review, and Columbia Journal of World Business among others. He has presented more than twenty five conference papers at major international conferences, such as the American Marketing Association and Academy of International Business.

While serving as Associate Dean at the Nanyang Business School in Singapore, Dr. Erramilli helped develop and launch the Berkeley-Nanyang Advanced Management Program and the Nanyang Executive MBA. He is an active consultant and has participated in numerous executive education programs for multinational companies, such as Samsung, Roche Diagnostics, Schering, DuPont, British Oxygen, DHL and KPMG. He served as the Chairman for the Academy of International Business-United States Southwest.

Calvin Hodock
Former Chairman of the Board of the American Marketing Association.

Calvin L. Hodock is former Chairman of the Board of the American Marketing Association, the world’s largest professional marketing society. He is a nationally recognized authority on marketing and product innovation. His marketing credentials were earned at the Gillette Company, Bayer, and Johnson & Johnson in senior management positions. He was also partner at Comart/KLP, one of the country’s largest marketing service agencies at the time. Hodock currently is on the Board of Directors of NuVim, Inc, a startup company marketing a line of healthy beverages to Wal-Mart and major supermarket accounts on the East Coast.

Hodock is a full time faculty member at Berkeley College teaching marketing courses at their Middlesex and Garrett Mountain campuses. He also teaches an advertising course at New York University and has been a guest lecturer at several colleges, including the Wharton School. During his stewardship of the American Marketing Association, Hodock created the prestigious AMA EDISON AWARD presented annually to American corporations for product innovation excellence. During a twelve-year period, he reviewed Edison submissions for literally thousands of new products and services from America’s elite corporations. Some of this material, not available in the public domain, was used in his new book Why Smart Companies Do Dumb Things. He became a heralded new product guru widely quoted in the press as a result of the Edison experience.

Hodock’s involvement with the EDISON AWARDS and his book on product innovation have resulted in appearances on Fox Business News CBS, CNN, CNBC, and Bloomberg, numerous radio stations in local markets, and print media, including publications like The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, San Jose Mercury. Brandweek, Advertising Age, Promo Magazine, and Marketing News. Numerous universities and professional organizations throughout the country, such as 3M and American Gas Association Financial Forum, have heard his thought-provoking lectures on marketing and innovation strategies. He is now working on another book The Brainwashing of America which focuses on branding.

Thomas K. Stat
Director of New Business Development, IDEO

Mr. Thomas K. Stat is an Associate Partner at IDEO, and is part of IDEO’s global relationship design community. As a member of IDEO Chicago’s leadership team, Tom manages a number of IDEO’s key client relationships and helps to direct business development efforts across all IDEO practice areas. His passion is in nurturing and sustaining innovation for IDEO’s clients by matching client aspirations and challenges with the passions and capabilities of IDEO’s professional staff. Tom has a diverse background that includes aerospace engineering studies at Purdue University, a Bachelor of Science in Social Psychology from Boston University, a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Bachelor of Architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design, and an executive MBA from Stanford University.

Sarah Miller Caldicott
a great grandniece of Thomas Edison and co-author of Innovate Like Edison.

Sarah Miller Caldicott is a great grandniece of Thomas Edison, 25-year marketing veteran, MBA, and co-author of Innovate Like Edison: The Success System of America’s Greatest Inventor, serves as Chairman of the EDISON AWARDS Steering Committee and Managing Director of the EDISON BEST NEW PRODUCT AWARDS. Sarah is an award-winning speaker, author, and thought leader on innovation. Following a domestic and international marketing career with Pepsico and Unilever, Sarah spent 10 years bringing her branding and product development expertise to small business owners and entrepreneurs. She also spent three years conducting research at Rutgers University, uncovering Edison’s world-changing innovation methods described as Edison’s Five Competencies of Innovation™. Sarah now offers innovation consulting and training services to organizations of all sizes. Sarah received a BA from Wellesley College, where she was named a Wellesley College Scholar, and holds an MBA from Dartmouth’s Amos Tuck School of Business. She has two boys, and currently lives in Chicago.

Tom Cosgrove
Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President Discovery Channel

Tom Cosgrove is chief operating officer and executive vice president for Discovery Channel. He reports to Discovery Channel President and General Manager Clark
Bunting. Cosgrove manages the day-to-day operations, including planning and executing overall business strategy, programming and development.

Cosgrove previously served as senior vice president and general manager of The Science Channel, where he managed the overall network plan, including programming, business and brand-enhancing strategies.

Prior to joining Discovery Networks, Cosgrove served as general manager for TV Guide Channel, where he led direct oversight of programming, production, marketing, business affairs, brand strategy, research and operations. He was responsible for year-over-year ratings growth for the first time in TV Guide Channel history.

Cosgrove also has held senior management positions at ABC Family, Fox Family, Fox Kids and Fox Broadcasting, in addition to running his own consultancy.