Edison on Innovation: 102 Lessons in Creativity for Business and Beyond

4.3. Lesson 27: Invest in Assets

Why does winning the lottery so often fail to make the winner happy? One reason is the failure to turn newfound riches into wealth. Lottery winners often rush out to buy things—cars, houses, furniture, vacations, and the like—that constitute expenses rather than assets, riches rather than wealth. When Edison sold a quadruplex telegraph system to the financier Jay Gould in 1875, he immediately invested the cash proceeds from the sale in books and scientific equipment for his laboratory. He plowed his profits back into his enterprise. It was an investment in assets—really, in his biggest asset: himself.

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Create wealth rather than riches by investing in assets, which will build your enterprise by enhancing your ...