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

6.9. Lesson 56: The Limits of Innovation

Thomas Edison had a boundless confidence in the salability of innovation. Make it new, he believed, and people would buy it. To a remarkable degree, his faith was well founded. By the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, the market for innovation was strong. People hungered for new technologies precisely because they were new.

Novelty promised a better life. Nevertheless, even innovation had its limits. The phonograph was a major source of revenue for Edison, sustaining much of his other research and experimentation. Always eager to stay ahead of the competition, Edison threw major resources behind continually improving phonograph technology in the belief that technology alone ...