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

6.2. Lesson 49: Give Praise to the Dissatisfied Customer

The self-taught Edison had a passion for education. He believed that well-educated citizens were essential not only as the creators of an advanced technological civilization but as the consumers of that civilization. He understood that high technology requires not only makers but buyers as well. "If modern industry and invention expected to have a market for its products," Edison wrote late in his life, "it had to turn school-master on an elaborate scale. It had to educate the world before it could sell the world." Edison argued that the purpose of education in a highly technological society was not to create happiness but, quite the contrary, to create among the population a restless ...