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

4.8. Lesson 32: Become a Collector

Edison the inventor and industrialist regarded himself as first and foremost a collector. He collected ideas, he collected patents, he collected breakthroughs, he collected failures, he collected promising craftsmen, scientists, workers, and assistants, he collected equipment, and—as he pointed out when he contemplated building a new laboratory–workshop in West Orange, New Jersey, he collected "almost every conceivable material of every size." He reasoned that to invent and to manufacture with maximum productivity and at top speed an inventor had to have on hand as much as he could of what any conceivable project could possibly require. Such an inventory, he declared, would enable "a man [to] produce 10 times ...