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

9.6. Lesson 84: Make Creativity a Predictable Process

Edison came to hold over a thousand patents, but he could not patent what was perhaps his single most significant invention: his own creative method. That was an innovation that shattered two enduring and pervasive patterns of production. The first was the long-held and rarely challenged belief that industrial production was incompatible with individual craftsmanship. The second was that invention was essentially born of inspiration and furthered by genius and was therefore entirely unpredictable. To overcome these crippling mythologies, Edison established at Menlo Park, New Jersey, what he called an "invention factory." It combined laboratory, workshop, and factory, and it employed scientists ...