How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World
1400047633
Randall E. Stross
Notes
But Edison did not give or withhold attention deliberately. He tinkered in the lab, oblivious to politics.
Edison was not receptive to guidance from others, whether its nature was technical, strategic, or business…Edison arranged his business affairs so that he could maintain complete independence, which required that those closest to him should not have strong opinions of their own…when failure was inevitable, he refused to acknowledge the facts…Edison could not take the pulse of a public from which he was isolated…“I found out that he could make awful mistakes, and I also found it didn’t pay to tell him about his mistakes. Let him find them out himself, and if you did that cleverly you were all right.”…As long as he was the one who made the decisions, he was happy, no matter what consequences followed for his businesses…Edison was self-absorbed, isolated, and convinced that he, and only he, knew best how to manage his business affairs…once his opinion was set, he had no wish to reopen the matter.
Edison failed to read the market. Without question, he was distracted by the attention that came with celebrity.
Edison was strongly averse to speaking in public…
Edison had the most reason to appreciate the seclusion of Menlo Park, and yet he acquiesced when necessity tapped on his shoulder, calling him to center stage.
Thomas Edison’s determination to spurn these opportunities to quickly commercialize the electric light, and instead to remain focused on the more difficult, but ultimately more significant, task of launching his own central power system, proved to be a brilliant stroke. It was not the result of formal study, or broad consultation with his lieutenants. Instead, it was an intuitive hunch that demonstrating the viability of a centralized system would be strategically more important to the business than accepting orders from individual customers.
He had not pursued the light for the sake of intellectual curiosity; his interest in electric light was nakedly commercial…“Anything that won’t sell I don’t want to invent, because anything that won’t sell hasn’t reached the acme of success. Its sale is proof of its utility, and utility is success.”…Edison was more concerned about his name than about the commercial fate of any of his inventions…Edison’s legacy was enhanced more by mistaken associations between his name and competitors’ products than by the sales of his own.
“We never made a dollar until we got the factory 180 miles away from Mr. Edison.”
Edison had never shown a talent for strategy, and he did not give the subject close study.
He was a prickly person who was used to getting his own way, insufferably opinionated and a carrier of the hateful prejudices of his day.
This book was largely critical of Edison.