Dare To Think Like Thomas Edison

“The most dangerous notion a young man can acquire is that there is no more room for originality.”—Henry Ford

Creativity or inventing is a skill that we can all learn. It is the art of putting things or ideas together in a better way than anyone has done it before. It is an approach for a better present and a more promising future. It is an example that Thomas Edison illustriously lived. 

Ironically, Edison was branded “retarded child” by his teacher in the earliest stages of his education. Yet he grew to become one of the greatest serial inventors of all time. He improved human standard of living in a significant measure. 

He was the inventor of the globally enduring utility: electric light bulb. He also invented the record player, motion picture camera, and a battery for an electric car. Overall, he patented more than one thousand inventions in one lifetime. 

In the book, The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented Modern World, the author, Randall Stross argues that Edison has enhanced the well-being of people, perhaps, more than any other single person in human history. He calls him the Napoleon of invention. 

Edison is therefore a role model to emulate if we have a real desire to improve the physical world in which we live. Now, let’s see how we can apply one of his paradigms in our approach to our work.

How To Think Like a Great Inventor

Thomas Edison himself disclosed to us the secret of his phenomena creativity in the following statement. He said:

“I never pick up an item without thinking of how I might improve it.”

That beautiful sentence shows the incredible force of Edison’s innovative mind. And interestingly, it also implies few key ideas to budding entrepreneurs in the modern creative business.  

It implies that it doesn’t matter whether the item in question is good enough already. It doesn’t matter if Edison was not the person who made the item in the first place. And it doesn’t matter if the item is apparently judged as failure or even success by the world. 

To Edison, it matters only what he can do by himself, to make it better than it currently is. The focus of his mind on anything he chooses was: 

How can I fix it, if it is broken? 

Or how can I improve it, if it is sort of okay?

 

You see, all his inventive efforts were borne of genuine desire to serve humanity. So I challenge you to apply this idea to your work, family and life; dare to live your life in a way that keeps adding value to others, to things and to yourself. This is what innovation means: changing things for good in our business, in our homes and in the society. However, don’t be stressed out by the challenge because it is not as hard as most of us assume, if we can learn to think as Edison did.

To think like Edison is to believe we can’t live better than trying to become better; to think like Edison is to believe that no matter how long something has been done a certain way, there is always a better way. To think like Edison is to believe that invention is a never ending process of growth.

The foregoing suggests that we must keep working to turn our novel ideas into impactful utilities. This is the exemplary way of The Wizard of Menlo Park. And it is the way of all innovators who advance humanity in both small and big degrees.Given that progress is the essence of life—from now on— this must also be our way: me and you!