The story of the lightbulb, Thomas Edison’s true genius and the impact of truly diverse teams.
This is one of my favourite stories about the impact and difference a truly diverse team can make when it comes to innovation.
Along the way, you will also learn more about Edison.
Edison is supposed to be one of the greatest inventors of all times. Also the most prolific. But the truth is that he wasn’t so great when it came to invention. But he was possibly one of the greatest innovators of all times. You will soon know why.
This story is about the invention of the incandescent lightbulb.
Thomas Edison is credited with inventing the light bulb around 1879. But the process of inventing it actually started in the early 1800’s. In 1802, Humphry Davy had demonstrated how a light bulb worked. Atleast a dozen people were already working on the formula that Edison finally used – passing electricity through a carbonised filament in a vaccum.
The list of partial inventors of the incandescent light bulb includes around 20 people over almost 80 years. It’s impossible to give one person credit for coming up with the idea of how to make the lightbulb work in theory.
It all came down to successful execution. Who could make a commercially viable product. The key was the material of the carbonised. filament. The right material which wouldn’t burn out quickly would make it a success.
As you can see, Edison came very late into the race to make the light bulb. There is no way you can credit him for coming up with the idea.
But what he did better than everyone else was to get the most crucial element right. He and his team found the right material for the filament.
He was able to do it because of his awesome team called the “Muckers”. They were highly diverse in terms of their qualifications, experience and nationality. There were mechanics, machinists, physicists, mathematicians, botanists, chemists and lots of other types of skill sets in the team. The creativity and know how which came from this diversity allowed them to test more materials faster than all the other teams put together. It is believed that they tried around 6,000 materials in over a year. Remember that 5,999 of these were failures.
Finally they cracked it with bamboo. Then they quickly spread out and made sure they got their hands on the supply of the strongest bamboo available. This was from Japan.
Edison’s real genius was inventing the best method of innovation. He knew about the benefits of diverse teams, of fast and prolific experimentation, of having a feedback loop and learning from failure and also of incentivising his team with equity – all of this long before all the great gyan books of the 21st century were written. His true greatness lies in this. And this wasn’t the only time he pulled it off.
Edison and his “muckers” is possibly my favourite example of what a truly diverse team with the right direction and right incentives can do when it comes to innovation.
It’s also important to. note that all the spoils and credit went to the person who solved for the filament. All the other early innovators didn’t get anything. This is true most of the time. The idea doesn’t matter so much. Making sure you get the filament right matters more than anything else.
So it’s important to figure out what’s the filament in our light bulb and put all our energy behind it. All the puns are unintentional 😀.
Edison is known for his famous quote – genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration. This story exemplifies it perfectly.
Story Credit – Steven Johnson and Matt Ridley’s books on the history of innovation.
