Management Hall of Fame
Most Respected Management Gurus

Thomas Edison
General Electric GE - The Business of Invention (1847-1931)

• "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration" (Thomas Edison)

Key Work

Inventor & Businessman - A Rare Combination

• Sells newspapers on the Grand Trunk Railway.
• Works as a telegraph operator; travels across the United States.
• Patents his first invention, an electric vote recorder.
• Takes up inventing full time. Starts his first business, making telegraph equipment. 
• Opens a factory and laboratory - Thus creating the first product research lab 
• Then develops quadruplex system for the telegraph, Invents the phonograph & develops the first commercially viable electric light bulb.
• Opens Pearl Street Central Power Station in New York City.
• Forms Edison General Electric, and invents the Kinetograph (an early motion picture camera).
• Edison General Electric merges with Thomson-Houston to become General Electric. Edison sells his interest.
• Invents a nickel-iron-alkaline storage battery.
• By end of his career he started up or controlled 13 major companies.
• He is recognize the genius of his times and credited with life changing inventions. By the end of his life Edison had accumulated 1,093 U.S. and 1,300 foreign patents.
• He was also a pragmatic business man who realized the innovation alone was not sufficient
• He understood the value of intellectual property as an assets and made effective use of to patenting 
• He understood the importance of entrepreneurship and that commercial success. and that he needed business partner

Books & References:

• Edison: Inventing the Century. New York: Hyperion, 1999.
• Josephson, Mathew. Edison: A Biography. New York: John Wiley, 1992.

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