Chapter 86 - The Boy’s Life of Edison
Today’s Chapter is based on the book “The Boy’s Life of Edison” by William H. Meadowcroft.
Thomas Edison was a prolific American inventor and businessman, best known for holding a world record of 1,093 patents. His most significant inventions include the phonograph, the incandescent light bulb, and the development of the first industrial research laboratory, which revolutionized the way inventions were created and commercialized. Edison's work laid the foundation for modern electric power systems and significantly influenced technological advancements in the 20th century.
Here’s what I have learned:
Edisonian Approach
“I gather data of many thousands of experiments as a starting point, and then I make thousands more.”
— Thomas Edison
As we have learned previously, Thomas Edison had a particular approach to inventing. His Edisonian approach favoured innovation through trial and error discovery rather than through a more systematic theoretical approach. While this may seem like an inefficient way to approach a problem, this allowed Edison to innovate even when there is no adequate theory to base on.
To understand how Edison came up with his Edisonian approach, it is important to learn more about his childhood experience. His early education was primarily guided by his mother as he did not attend a regular school. As such, he was exploring various subjects through reading books within his reach.
However, one particular thing about Edison was the fact that “he did not believe the statements made in his books until he had tested them for himself.” This hands-on approach to learning enabled him to grasp complex concepts and apply them practically. In fact, at the young age of eleven, Edison, who was captivated by chemistry, was a recurrent client of local drug stores as he was constantly buying materials to test out various chemical reactions he would read from books. But more importantly, Edison had the incredible talent to never forget anything that he learned that was in any way useful.
Furthermore, while it may seems that Edison was a ceaseless experimenter without purpose, it is important to note that Edison’s trial and error experimentation was actually very systematic and methodical. He maintained extensive notebooks filled with sketches, calculations, and observations, which served as a record of his experiments. This meticulous documentation not only helped Edison keep track of his ideas but also allowed him to refine and improve upon them over time.
“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”
— Thomas Edison
In his book “How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom”, Matt Ridley explains how “Thomas Edison understood better than anybody before, and many since, that innovation itself is a product, the manufacturing of which is a team effort requiring trial and error.” As a matter of fact, Edison’s contribution to the light bulb is a proof that innovation is a gradual, incremental, collective yet inescapable from the inevitable process of failing along the way.
As we have once learned from Michael Jordan, people rarely pay attention to the effort that it takes for people to become successful. He explains that success comes from all the little efforts that were made to improve one step at the time, and people tend to forget that. When he moved to the world of business, he realised that great companies have a lot in common with basketball teams. Through reverse engineering, he figured out that players who practice hard when no one is paying attention are the ones that will play well when everyone is watching.
One of Michael Jordan’s quote saying reflects this concept. He once said, “I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
“They don't understand the foundation I had to create to support everything that came afterward. They don't know about lifting weights at 7 A.M., practicing hard every day, finding ways to motivate myself for every game, sitting up half the night with an ankle in a bucket of ice, or hooked up to an electronic stimulation machine. They don't know anything about those things.”
— Michael Jordan
Furthermore, the most challenging thing about keeping a good work ethic is to do it for a long period of time. As Jordan would say, “commitment cannot be compromised by rewards.” In fact, while it is challenging to not give up and to persist with our good habits and efforts when things go wrong, it is even more mentally difficult to be consistent once we have a taste of success.
In Jordan's opinion, this sense of commitment can be seen with just about anyone achieving at a high level; he gives the example of Tiger Woods who was back in the gym by 6:30 to work out the morning after he beat Phil Mickelson at the Ford Championship in 2005. Similarly, businesses must also stay focus and committed to what worked for it to continue to grow. Too many businesses have failed by resting on their laurels or by diversifying into worse businesses.
“Excellence isn't a one-week or one-year ideal. It's a constant. There will be days when you don't feel on top of your game, meetings in which you aren't at your best, but your commitment remains constant. No compromises.”
— Michael Jordan
Work Ethic
“Great things come from hard work and perseverance. No excuses.” — Kobe Bryant
Considering the amount of trials and errors Edison had to go through to succeed with his inventions, it is fair to say that a big part of his success as an inventor can be attributed to his great work ethic and dedication to learning. In fact, he was known for his rigorous daily schedule, often dedicating up to eighteen hours a day to his studies and experiments.
This relentless commitment to hard work and to learning is also the reason why he refused to give up on his experiments. As we have mentioned previously, he often tackled complex challenges with a mindset that failure was simply a step toward success and increasing his knowledge. A reporter once asked Edison, “How does it feel to fail a thousand times?”. He simply answered, “I didn’t fail a thousand times. The lightbulb is an invention that required 1000 attempts before it could succeed.”
“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.”
— Thomas Edison
In the book, Meadowcroft writes that “while Edison is just as great as imagined, yet this greatness has not been reached by chance, but honestly earned by the hardest kind of hard work.” Edison’s life should be a reminder that success never comes without hard work and sacrifice. As he once said, “Many of life’s failures are people who didn’t realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
Furthermore, in my opinion, another reason for his success as an inventor originated from his curiosity and dedication to learning at a young age. As a matter of fact, when he was younger, he purposely started working as a newsboy in order to fund his books and his experiments. This commitment to his education laid the foundation for his later career as an inventor.
Not only that, Edison also made sure to surround himself with smart people to work alongside him. As he built his workshops and laboratories, he made some great relationships with numerous individuals who would later become prominent figures in the electrical industry. One of these men is Samuel Insull who once said, “Whatever knowledge I may have of the electric light and power industry I feel I owe it to the tuition of Edison.”
This reminds me of the importance of intellectual curiosity in the success of an inventor. As we have learned previously, Orville Wright, one of the Wright brothers, believed that the main reason for their success in creating the first successful motor-operated plane in history and the special advantage they had over the others that were also looking to master flying is their intellectual curiosity, cultivated from a young age by their father.
In fact, despite having no college education, no formal technical training, no experience working with anyone other than themselves, no friends in high places, no financial backers, no government subsidies, and little money of their own, the Wright Brothers still managed to be the first ones in mastering the art of flying.
“But it isn’t true to say we had no special advantages…the greatest thing in our favor was growing up in a family where there was always much encouragement to intellectual curiosity.”
— Orville Wright
Purposeful Innovation
“To contribute to human welfare, and therefore catch on without subsidy, an innovation must meet two tests: it must be useful to individuals, and it must save time, energy or money in the accomplishment of some task.”
— Matt Ridley
Thomas Edison’s first patent was the vote recorder. He invented it when he was just 21 years of age. However, governments refused to purchase the vote recorder, making it somewhat obsolete. Young Edison learned an incredible lesson from this: focus on inventions that met a genuine need. As Meadowcroft explains, after this incident, Edison was “determined from that time forth to devote his inventive faculties only to things for which there was a real, genuine demand.”
As such, this commitment to creating functional inventions that addressed real-world problems truly set Edison apart from many of his contemporaries. Edison’s most notable invention, the incandescent light bulb, exemplifies his innovation approach. Rather than simply creating a light source, he focused on developing a practical, long-lasting solution that could be used in homes and businesses.
As a matter of fact, Edison was not the first one to tackle the challenge of inventing an electric lamp. However, he believed that others before him failed because they had been following the wrong track. In fact, he recognized that previous experiments with electric lamps had failed due to their impracticality. Edison believed that electric lighting could only become a success only if it can be sold to the public at a reasonable price. This insight led him to form the Edison Electric Light Company in New York in 1878, backed by famous financiers like J.P. Morgan and the Vanderbilt family, with the sole purpose of making electric lighting as accessible as possible by developing a complete system for distributing electric light.
"We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles."
— Thomas Edison
As such, it is fair to say that Edison did not merely invent for the sake of novelty and to obtain new patents. Instead, he was solely focused on creating practical solutions that would have a lasting impact on society. For example, one of Edison’s most significant contributions was his development of the carbon transmitter, which revolutionized the telephone. This invention transformed the way people communicated.
Finally, Edison’s approach to innovation was special due to his ability to see potential where others did not. For instance, when he invented the phonograph, many of his contemporaries were skeptical of the idea of a machine that could reproduce human speech.
This notion reminds me of Akio Morita’s innovation philosophy at Sony. His plan was to lead the public with new products rather than to ask the public what kind of products they wanted. The reasoning behind this is that he believed that the public doesn’t know what is possible, but he did.
However, Morita also noticed that he had to create a market through education in order for Sony to be successful. Since Sony’s products were soo unique and innovative, they had to educate the buyers on the value they would get in order to close sales. Simply said, if your customer don’t understand the purpose of your product, he won’t buy it.
“I then realized that having unique technology and being able to make unique products are not enough to keep a business going. You have to sell the products, and to do that you have to show the potential buyer the real value of what you are selling.”
— Akio Morita
Beyond the Book
Read "The Ingredients For Innovation" by Farnam Street
Read "The Unexpected Path to Success" by Farnam Street
Listen "#107 Matt Ridley: Infinite Innovation" by The Knowledge Project by Shane Parrish
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