Was Thomas Edison a Moonshot Inventor?

A great businessman, yes. A great inventor, maybe.

Until his death in 1931, Edison and his researchers were credited with more than 1,000 patents.

However, his most important invention was one that couldn’t be patented: the process of modern invention itself. By applying the principles of mass production to the 19th-century model of the solitary inventor, Edison created a process in which skilled scientists, machinists, designers, and others collaborated at a single facility to research, develop, and manufacture new technologies. From the Menlo Park Museum

There were more than 20 other inventors who created incandescent light bulbs before Edison. But Edison and his army at the Menlo Park lab kept experimenting with different materials for filaments, since the burn time, or the time light was created, was always too short. The Edison team tested thousands of materials to improve on existing light-bulb technology before settling on a type of carbon that would burn for 14 hours. Later improvements by Edison and his team included using bamboo instead of carbon, which burned for more than a thousand hours.

One of the world’s most important inventions was not a moonshot after all but a series of incremental improvements of an existing technology.

Thought provoking!!

I love the way George Pillari turns important business lessons into great relevant stories that are easy to put in context.