Thomas Edison ideas Oct 23
8 comments Latest by Justin Bell
Some good Thomas Edison quotes:
I didn’t fail ten thousand times. I successfully eliminated, ten thousand times, materials and combinations which wouldn’t work.
I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others.
I am more of a sponge than an inventor. I absorb ideas from every source. My principal business is giving commercial value to the brilliant but misdirected ideas of others.
Time is really the only capital that any human being has, and the one thing that he can’t afford to lose.
I find out what the world needs. Then I go ahead and try to invent it.
I have more respect for the fellow with a single idea who gets there than for the fellow with a thousand ideas who does nothing.
Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
Thomas Edison, World’s Greatest…..Product Marketer discusses Edison’s emphasis on marketing.
Edison was not so much an inventor as a great product marketer. His image as an inventor was part of his carefully cultivated and controlled public relations and media strategy. He was opportunistic and extremely media savvy. He had a special office set up at Menlo Park and carefully designed the entire operation from a media perspective such that he was able to brand himself as the world’s greatest inventor.
And Edison – Inventing and Marketing Genius reveals Edison’s (Jobs-like) approach to product announcements.
Edison not only wrote his own press releases, but frequently held press conferences. He would announce a dramatic and innovative breakthrough long before the invention was ready for prime time.
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8 comments so far
brad 23 Oct 07
Those are great. “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up” reminds me of a joke my father used to tell about the soda company that invented One-up, Two-up, Three-up, Four-up, Five-up, and Six-up before calling it quits. “Little did they know how close they came,” he used to say.
Many inventors don’t have the discipline or even the motivation to follow through on their schemes; Edison was an exception who could put his ideas into practice.
Jose Espinal 24 Oct 07
Matt, thank you so much for those quotes, I was almost giving up in a project as today, and after reading a couple of quotes in there, I changed my mind.
Tom G. 24 Oct 07
Edison’s brand of genius was that you will always succeed if you never give up. This is a major key to success.
Edison however was not a nice guy. He used a lot of people mericilessly and had no qualms about marketing inferior and even dangerous products.
My favorite example was the distribution of electrical power. He used his resources to invent the electric chair to prove that alternating current was dangerous and that people should only use (his safer) direct current. His low voltage high current direct current power distribution was of course much more dangerous due to fires caused by bad connections.
So my conclusion is that while he was a shrewd marketer, he may not have had the public’s best interest at heart. I’m not sure Edison was such a great role model…
Christefano 24 Oct 07
I don’t really want to sour the mood (especially when commenters like Jose find these quotes helpful), but what is with people’s tireless adoration of Edison? He was a monopolist and regularly took credit for his employee’s inventions (and outright stole others like the phonograph). Sure, he had interesting things to say, but Edison was a successful project manager who called himself an inventor.
Jose Espinal 25 Oct 07
Hey, Christefano, I totally know that about Edison, he was not the best at ethics, but I just wrote that quote not admiring the man behind it, just admiring the words. Writings sometimes are catchy, because not always what you read (something someone wrote or said) is actually what they do or practice, but is how you take that, that really takes the meaning out of the words.
Jose Espinal 25 Oct 07
wrote that comment
Don Schenck 26 Oct 07
I read - just today - that Edison used an IV drip of cocaine to pull all-nighters.
Interesting.
I prefer Maker’s Mark and a good night’s sleep! :-)
Justin Bell 26 Oct 07
Not to mention his habit of abducting people’s pets and electrocuting them! Tesla would never do that.
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