Edison- Inventing and Marketing Genius

"I find out what the world needs. Then I goahead and try to invent it." - Thomas Edison

With 1093 patents bearing his name, Thomas Edison is the worlds most prolific inventor. The legacy he left behind will end ear him to future generations because of his inventions, but also because of the stories behind the man.

Perhaps because he was partially deaf or because he asked too many questions, young Mr. Edison was not a great student. In fact, his teachers assessed him as slow and dull, so much of his education came from home schooling. Quite a plug for home schooling. Edison was a voracious reader and had an extra ordinarily inquisitive mind.

As Edison grew, he experimented continuously, and as he put it, "I always invent to obtain money to go on inventing."

Edison eventually created an invention factory - churning out a minor invention every two weeks, and a great invention about every six months. This invention factory of about 40 employees applied for 400 patents each year! His work in the areas of electric lighting, batteries, telegraph, and the phonograph were remarkable accomplishments for a man that admitted to lacking mathematical and theoretical teachings. "I do not depend on figures at all. I try an experiment and reason out the result, somehow, by methods which I could not explain."

But there’s another side to Edison that is equally compelling - his marketing ability and business sense.

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. Sounds a little like Microsoft’s operating systems.

An example of Edison’s cunning is the debacle that arose when two competing forms of electricity were available - Direct Current (DC) and Alternating Current (AC). The AC version was far more efficient and is used in all households today. But, Edison had several key patents on DC electricity, and also manufactured most of the DC equipment. So, he invited the press and staged experiments where he electrocuted small animals with AC electricity.

Another classic Edison marketing story is his sale of electric caps, a sort of a predecessor for the childproof outlet covers we now use. When electricity was first introduced, many people were frightened that the electricity would escape from the outlets and cause fires. Ratherthan try to convince the public that electricity couldn’t leak out, Edison -the marketing maven - saw an opportunity and began to sell covers for the outlets.

Even the inventing of the light bulb comes with a story. After years of experimenting with different materials, Edison made the first practical lighting system with carbonized bamboo fibre as the filament. He then went and purchased vast fields containing this specific bamboo, essentially locking out the competition. Once again demonstrating the acute business acumen of the Wizard of Menlo Park.

Edison's humble beginnings and his rag-to-riches story is the American Dream, and helped spark the technological revolution that usheredin many of the inventions of this last century. "From his neck down a man is worth a couple of dollars aday. From his neck up he is worth anything that his brain can produce." - Thomas Edison