Thomas Edison and the Theory and Practice of Innovation

In December 1990 Financial Worm took a poll of the Business History Conference to determine the most important individuals and organizations in the business world in the past hundred years. The poll set out to find the greatest business leaders of the twentieth century, the most important companies, and the biggest business flops. Apart from the question about the most important invention of the twentieth century, it is doubtful if Thomas Edison's name will be mentioned in the responses to the poll, for here is a man associated more with invention than with management and a historical figure that belongs more in the nineteenth century than in the twentieth. Yet as an innovator who set out to manufacture and market his inventions, Edison set in motion a strategy that continues to dominate American business. In a career that bridged the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Edison was an important pioneer in the innovative business organizations and strategies that are now claimed by some of America's most successful companies. Edison deserves to be recognized as an important business leader of the twentieth century.