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Like other authors who write about innovation, I love Thomas Edison stories. He was an inventive genius and found the code to serial innovation more than 120 years ago.
That code is still in use by companies like IDEO who've learned his lessons and both improved upon them and added to them. But the basic core is still the same.
Less well known is Edison's entrepreneurial side. He put financiers, government officials, politicians and inventors like himself together in an inspired coalition that built the first electrical grid in New York City.
After all, what good is a lightbulb if you don't have a source of electricity to power it?
But his inventions were not always successful, nor were his attempts to market and sell them.
For example, very few people know about Edison's talking doll. I think she looks like the "Bride of Chucky" and is more than a little spooky. Talking, animated objects are commonplace today, but Edison...