Edison relentlessly recorded and illustrated every step of his voyage to discovery in his 3500 notebooks that were discovered after his death in 1931. Keeping a written record of his work was a significant key to his genius. His notebooks got him into the following habits:
They enabled him to cross-fertilize ideas, techniques and conceptual models by transferring them from one problem to the next.
For example, when it became clear in 1900 that an iron-ore mining venture in which Edison was financially committed was failing and on the brink of bankruptcy, he spent a weekend poring over his notebooks and came up with a detailed plan to redirect the company's efforts toward the manufacture of Portland cement, which could capitalize on the same model as the iron-ore company.
Whenever he succeeded with a new idea, would review his notebooks to rethink ideas and inventions he'd abandoned in the past in the light of what he'd recently learned. If he were mentally blocked working on a new idea, he would review his notebooks to see if there was some thought or insight that could trigger a new approach.
For example, Edison took his unsuccessful work to develop an undersea telegraph cable and incorporated it into the design of a telephone transmitter that adapted to the changing sound waves of the caller's voice. This technique instantly became the industry standard.
Edison would often jot down his observations of the natural world, failed patents and research papers written by other inventors, and ideas others had come up with in other fields. He would also routinely comb a wide variety of diverse publications for novel ideas that sparked his interest and record them in his notebooks. He made it a habit to look out for novel and interesting ideas that others had used successfully on other problems in other fields. To Edison, an idea needed to be original only in its adaptation to the problem he was working on.
Edison also studied his notebooks of past inventions and ideas to use as springboards for other inventions and ideas in their own right. To Edison his diagrams and notes on the telephone ( sounds transmitted ) suggested the phonograph ( sounds recorded ), which in turn suggested motion pictures ( image recorded ).
Source:
Cracking Creativity
Pg. 105
Michael Michalko
Ten Speed Press
ISBN: 0-8981-5913-X
They enabled him to cross-fertilize ideas, techniques and conceptual models by transferring them from one problem to the next.
For example, when it became clear in 1900 that an iron-ore mining venture in which Edison was financially committed was failing and on the brink of bankruptcy, he spent a weekend poring over his notebooks and came up with a detailed plan to redirect the company's efforts toward the manufacture of Portland cement, which could capitalize on the same model as the iron-ore company.
Whenever he succeeded with a new idea, would review his notebooks to rethink ideas and inventions he'd abandoned in the past in the light of what he'd recently learned. If he were mentally blocked working on a new idea, he would review his notebooks to see if there was some thought or insight that could trigger a new approach.
For example, Edison took his unsuccessful work to develop an undersea telegraph cable and incorporated it into the design of a telephone transmitter that adapted to the changing sound waves of the caller's voice. This technique instantly became the industry standard.
Edison would often jot down his observations of the natural world, failed patents and research papers written by other inventors, and ideas others had come up with in other fields. He would also routinely comb a wide variety of diverse publications for novel ideas that sparked his interest and record them in his notebooks. He made it a habit to look out for novel and interesting ideas that others had used successfully on other problems in other fields. To Edison, an idea needed to be original only in its adaptation to the problem he was working on.
Edison also studied his notebooks of past inventions and ideas to use as springboards for other inventions and ideas in their own right. To Edison his diagrams and notes on the telephone ( sounds transmitted ) suggested the phonograph ( sounds recorded ), which in turn suggested motion pictures ( image recorded ).
Source:
Cracking Creativity
Pg. 105
Michael Michalko
Ten Speed Press
ISBN: 0-8981-5913-X
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