Thomas Edison: Success and Innovation through Failure

Thomas Edison: Success and Innovation through Failure PDF Author: Ian Wills
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030299406
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book develops a systematic approach to the role of failure in innovation, using the laboratory notebooks of America's most successful inventor, Thomas Edison. It argues that Edison's active pursuit of failure and innovative uses of failure as a tool were crucial to his success. From this the author argues that not only should we expect innovations to fail but that there are good reasons to want them to fail. Using Edison's laboratory notebooks, written as he worked and before he knew the outcome we see the many false starts, wrong directions and failures that he worked through on his way to producing revolutionary inventions. While Edison's strengths in exploiting failure made him the icon of American inventors, they could also be liabilities when he moved from one field to another. Not only is this book of value to readers with an interest in the history of technology and American invention, its insights are important to those who seek to innovate and to those who employ and finance them.

Thomas Edison: Success and Innovation through Failure

Thomas Edison: Success and Innovation through Failure PDF Author: Ian Wills
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030299406
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book develops a systematic approach to the role of failure in innovation, using the laboratory notebooks of America's most successful inventor, Thomas Edison. It argues that Edison's active pursuit of failure and innovative uses of failure as a tool were crucial to his success. From this the author argues that not only should we expect innovations to fail but that there are good reasons to want them to fail. Using Edison's laboratory notebooks, written as he worked and before he knew the outcome we see the many false starts, wrong directions and failures that he worked through on his way to producing revolutionary inventions. While Edison's strengths in exploiting failure made him the icon of American inventors, they could also be liabilities when he moved from one field to another. Not only is this book of value to readers with an interest in the history of technology and American invention, its insights are important to those who seek to innovate and to those who employ and finance them.

Innovation: A Very Short Introduction

Innovation: A Very Short Introduction PDF Author: Mark Dodgson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199568901
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 163

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book demonstrates how innovation is used to create wealth, productivity growth, and improved quality of life

Edison on Innovation

Edison on Innovation PDF Author: Alan Axelrod
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 9780470231395
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this fascinating exploration of one of the most celebrated and innovative minds, best-selling author Alan Axelrod cuts through the myths and reverence surrounding Edison’s “genius” to show how the inventor was, in fact, an ordinary man who created extraordinary work. While many of us believe that creativity, like genius, is something that just happens by chance or destiny, Edison’s life demonstrates that creativity of the very highest order can indeed be summoned up at will, and even reduced to a reliable working method and set of principles.

Innovate Like Edison

Innovate Like Edison PDF Author: Michael Gelb
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780525950318
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Get Book Here

Book Description
Provides a guide to the creative strategies used by Thomas Edison, counseling inventors and entrepreneurs on how to use these steps to find success in the modern business market.

Inventing the Future

Inventing the Future PDF Author: Sarah Miller Caldicott
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118219864
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 81

Get Book Here

Book Description
Thomas Edison holds over a thousand patents in his name, including the electric light bulb, the phonograph, and motion picture camera. He is considered among the world's most prolific inventors, with a work ethic and vision for the future that helped change the modern world. And with all of the advances in current technology that he helped to invent, just imagine: What Would Thomas Edison Be Doing Today? Author Sarah Miller Caldicott, a great-grandniece of Edison and expert in his methods, sets out to answer just that. Inventing the Future is a well-researched, intriguing look at how Edison would innovate today using new technology, and how modern day thinkers can adapt his proven innovation methods to their advantage. It also includes 7 steps anyone can take to start thinking like an innovator, and offers a hands-on view of how creativity and risk-taking come together to design powerful concepts that create new markets. Learn the strategies needed to remove innovation barriers, begin driving the breakthroughs of the future, and change the way you do business. Stimulate your ability to imagine what's possible.

The Papers of Thomas A. Edison

The Papers of Thomas A. Edison PDF Author: Thomas A. Edison
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421400901
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 862

Get Book Here

Book Description
Gathers sketches, notebook entries, letters, articles, patent information, and financial papers from the beginning of Edison's career as an inventor

Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins

Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins PDF Author: Richard Farson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743254422
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 145

Get Book Here

Book Description
Success in today's business economy demands nonstop innovation. But fancy buzzwords, facile lip service, and simplistic formulas are not the answer. Only an entirely new mindset -- a new attitude toward success and failure -- can transform managers' thinking, according to Richard Farson, author of the bestseller Management of the Absurd, and Ralph Keyes, author of the pathbreaking Chancing It: Why We Take Risks, in this provocative new work. According to Farson and Keyes, the key to this new attitude lies in taking risks. In a rapidly changing economy, managers will confront at least as much failure as success. Does that mean they'll have failed? Only by their grandfathers' definition of failure. Both success and failure are steps toward achievement, say the authors. After all, Coca-Cola's renaissance grew directly out of its New Coke debacle, and severe financial distress forced IBM to completely reinvent itself. Wise leaders accept their setbacks as necessary footsteps on the path toward success. They also know that the best way to fall behind in a shifting economy is to rely on what's worked in the past -- as when once-innovative companies like Xerox and Polaroid relied too heavily on formulas that had grown obsolete. By contrast, companies such as GE and 3M have remained vibrant by encouraging innovators, even when they suffered setbacks. In their stunning new book, Farson and Keyes call this enlightened approach "productive mistake-making." Rather than reward success and penalize failure, they propose that managers focus on what can be learned from both. Paradoxically, the authors argue, the less we chase success and flee from failure, the more likely we are to genuinely succeed. Best of all, they have written a little jewel of a book, packed with fresh insights, blessedly brief, and to the point.

Thomas Edison: Lighting a Revolution

Thomas Edison: Lighting a Revolution PDF Author: Nick Cimarusti
Publisher: Teacher Created Materials
ISBN: 1493867156
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 35

Get Book Here

Book Description
Not all of Thomas Edison's inventions were successful, but he didn't let this deter him from trying. He believed in using failure as a chance to learn and improve. Readers will be inspired by Thomas Edison's fascinating life and how he achieved success in this Informational Text created in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution! Build reading skills while engaging students' curiosity about STEAM topics through real-world examples. Packed with factoids and informative sidebars, this book features a hands-on STEAM challenge that is perfect for use in a makerspace and teaches students every step of the engineering design process. Make STEAM career connections with career advice from actual Smithsonian employees working in STEAM fields. Discover engineering innovations that solve real-world problems with content that touches on all aspects of STEAM: Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, and Math!

Innovation Capital

Innovation Capital PDF Author: Jeff Dyer
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
ISBN: 1633696537
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Get Book Here

Book Description
Learn from the Best Great leaders of innovation know that creativity is not enough. They succeed not only on the basis of their ideas, but because they have the vision, reputation, and networks to win the backing needed to commercialize them. It turns out that this quality--called "innovation capital"--is measurably more important for innovation than just being creative. The authors have spent decades studying how people get great ideas (the subject of The Innovator's DNA) and how people test and develop those ideas (explored in The Innovator's Method). Now they share what they've learned from a multipronged research program designed to determine how people compete for, and obtain, resources to launch new ideas: How you can build a personal reputation for innovation What techniques you can use to amplify your innovation capital How you can garner attention for your ideas and projects and persuade audiences to support them What it means to provide visionary leadership and how you can achieve it Featuring interviews with the superstars of innovation--individuals like Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Elon Musk (Tesla), Marc Benioff (Salesforce), Indra Nooyi (PepsiCo), and Shantanu Narayen (Adobe)--this book will help you position yourself and your ideas to compete for attention and resources so that you can launch innovations with impact.

The Papers of Thomas A. Edison: From workshop to laboratory, June 1873-March 1876

The Papers of Thomas A. Edison: From workshop to laboratory, June 1873-March 1876 PDF Author: Thomas Alva Edison
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780801831010
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 842

Get Book Here

Book Description
The third volume of this widely acclaimed series reveals the breath-taking intensity, intellectual acumen, and vast self-confidence of twenty-nine-year-old Thomas Edison. In the depths of the 1870s depression, he moved his independent research and development laboratory from industrial Newark to pastoral Menlo Park, some fifteen miles to the south on the main line of the railroad from New York to Philadelphia. There, equipped with resources for experimental development that were extraordinary for their time, Edison and a few close associates began twenty months of research that expanded their well-established accomplishments in telegraphy into pioneering work on the telephone. Edison's ideas and techniques from telegraph message recording and the telephone next led to his invention of the phonograph, the first patent for which was filed in December 1877. This invention ultimately gave Edison a world-wide reputation--and the nickname "the wizard of Menlo Park." Praise for previous volumes of The Papers of Thomas A. Edison: "The essence of the volume is Edison's technical notebooks, a window onto the inventor's workshop. His lucidity comes through everywhere... His writing and drawing come together as a single, vigorous thought process."--Russell McCormmach, New York Times. "A mine of material... Scrupulously edited... No one could ask for more... A choplicking feast for Edison biographers--well into the next century, and perhaps beyond."--Fred Howard, Washington Post. "A triumph of the bookmaker's art, with splendidly arranged illustrations, essential background information, and cautionary reminders of the common sources on which Edison's imagination drew."--David Joravsky, New York Review of Books. "In the pages of this volume Edison the man, his work, and his times come alive... A delight to browse through or to read carefully."--Thomas J. Misa, Science.