Thomas Edison (1847 - 1931)

In a nutshell: He was an inventor and a businessman, holding 1093 patents in his name.

His famous inventions:

• lightbulb
• phonograph (the ancestor of music player)
• motion picture camera (the ancestor of video camera)
• telegraph (the ancestor of telephone)
• battery

His approach: go for quantity. He was convinced that if he had thousands of ideas, some would be viable. He had a quota set for himself: one minor invention every ten days and two major inventions yearly. He thought of creativity as honest and hard work.

He said:

His method:

1. For creativity he invented a special method. Sitting in an armchair, he took two metal balls with either hands. He also put a metal bucket on each side of the chair. While relaxing, he started to doze, close to sleep. At a moment his grip on the balls weakened, they fell into the buckets with a bang. He came around from his hazy dreams and tried to seize any insprirational thoughts. The method is easy to understand. While awake, our consciousness controls our brain. We are most creative when we are about to fall asleep.
2. He looked for problems to solve them. He was basically more a businessman than an inventor. He invented things to market and sell.
3. In the absence of theories he turned to the trial and error method. He was the guy who always doubted and wanted to try out everything.
4. Before he started to work on anything, he spent an awful lot of time on collecting all the available information about it.
5. He invented the first laboratory and he worked with others. Though most inventions are related to his name, most of them was the product of teamwork.

Key takeaway:

Visit this page if you want to know more about this curious mind.