4.2. Lesson 26: Insure the Permanency of an Investment
Edison held that there was a "law in commercial things as in nature." He believed that if you attempted to "obtain more profit than the general average," you would be "immediately punished by competition." He therefore adopted a practice of "insuring the permanency of an investment" by lowering prices on his products sufficiently to remove any "inducement to others to come in and ruin" the market. That is, he strove to position himself so that no one could make what he made cheaper. Through a combination of advanced manufacturing and a willingness to reduce profit margin, Edison's early electric lamps were so inexpensive that he hoped "to make it positively impossible for [competition] to ...
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