Edison, Invention, Apple,

Edison's Work - the I-Pods, I-Pads, and Macs of their day.

And How Canada can create the Next Steve Jobs

7 October 2011

It seems almost discourteous and even delusional, particularly this week, to suggest that there ever was or ever could be another Steve Jobs (Stanford speech).  But if one had to identify an individual with a similar streak of starshine and stubbornness (see Stubborn Steve), it might be Thomas Alva Edison, who passed away 80 years ago this month.

Like Steve Jobs, Edison pulled the innovations and ideas of others into unique combinations and products that had meaning and value to human beings.  Also, like Jobs, Edison was not satisfied to invent and innovate; he pushed, often against the tide of prevailing wisdom, to bring those products and services to market within the framework of a business enterprise.  Thomas Alva Edison was not without his detractors; yet he was certainly persistent, inspiring, inventive on many levels, and wise in many fields of research and innovative business.

His version of the incandescent lamp, the glowing electric light bulb with its heated filament line, still stands as an international symbol for inventiveness well over a century after its unveiling despite the advent of the personal computer, the digital age, I-Phones, and all that they have wrought.  In Menlo Park, New Jersey, Edison established and ran the world’s first true industrial research laboratory, an innovation that could stand on its own as a potent global influence and remains a model that underpins the success of, not just Apple™, but all innovative technology-based business.

While we are awed by the string of Apple™ creations, Edison’s genius is linked to some 1,093 unique inventions.  This is the number of patents that bear his name. The figure established the record and would dwarf the patent statistics of his most brilliant and commercially sensitive disciples in invention. Edison was inherently capable.

At the time of his 1931 death at the age of 84, Edison had changed the world for the better through his combinations of ingenuity and industry.  Phonographs, motion pictures, telephones, and power generation were the Macs™, I-Pods™, and I-Pads™ of their day and were all defined by Edison’s ideas and his works.  Edison had much in common with the innovative Apple™ co-founder; yet, anyone who might have suggested that there was another Edison coming along just over the horizon would have been branded discourteous and delusional in 1931.

As with Steve Jobs, Edison was an American: interesting for students of Canadian innovation and significant for admirers from afar, particularly since Edison scholars suggest that their hero would never have achieved greatness had he been raised outside the U.S.  Thankfully - they say  - he was not a Canadian !!

“The world might never have heard of Thomas Alva Edison if his family

had not been forced to leave their home in the small village of Vienna in

Upper Canada (what is today the province of Ontario). The young Edison

would have found a more sedate economic and industrial environment in

Canada than he did in the United States, one that did not emphasize

invention and innovation”.

Israel, Paul, Edison: A Life of Invention

 (New York, Toronto, and other: John Wiley

& Sons, Inc., 1998)

Edison’s family was of Canadian Loyalist stock and lived in what is now Southwestern Ontario.  His father, Sam, who found himself on the unfortunate side of William Lyon Mackenzie’s 1837 Rebellion in Upper Canada, fled the region to the U.S.  where he was later joined by his wife and children. After their relocation to the U.S., his wife gave birth to others, but only one of her American born survived. Thomas Alva was born in the U.S. on February 11, 1847 in a small town in Ohio.  

While the young Edison spent summer vacations in Canada with the Canadian side of his family and would even invent and work as a young man as a telegraph operator in Stratford, Ontario, his formative years and productive life were eminently American. The perception that U.S.-style capitalism, private enterprise, and individual promotion provided a better environment for his successes is likely sound since Edison’s capacity to pursue his dreams and bring them to the world were a function of his access to capital and his own personal business bent. He was supported by the great capitalists of the period in his quest to perfect the electric light bulb, and he was driven to commercialize his invention by material as well as professional rewards.

He and Steve Jobs had motivations and qualities that are said to be too often lacking in Canadian innovators, who, in fact, developed the electric light bulb, the computer mouse, and human-computer interface (not to mention the smart phone technologies) years before the great U.S. innovator-businessmen took them to the next step and great market success.  Still, Edison was seen as the embodiment of a passing era - and this is where he differed from Steve Jobs in a particular way.

 “Edison never recognized how profoundly industrial research had

changed by the end of his career as a growing body of technical and scientific knowledge made specialization a necessity.

Perhaps if he had hired specialists to aid him in his later years Edison might have remained a significant figure in industrial research by meshing their talents and knowledge with his abilities as a generalist to define critical problems and judge among various solutions.

But he failed even to build on his own experience and create a corporate research organization that could survive him and provide new inventions to assure the long-term health of his own company”. Ibid

While there are those who angst for the future of Apple™, few would accuse Steve Jobs of similar failings nor would they suggest that Jobs’ iconic success was not a function of a team of innovative people, partnerships, and collaboration toward a common goal.

And here is where there may be an opportunity for Canada.  Many, if not all, of its greatest innovation successes (see Canada's Great Inventor) have been the result of novel collaborations and vibrant, multidisciplinary teams: from the partnership of scientists and prairie farmers who developed Canola (and other inventions) as the country’s major food crop to the engineers, patients, and surgeons who spawned the first heart pacemaker.  It is within our grasp to extend this capacity to collaborate.

Easier said than done.   But we know that one force both helps congeal an imagined goal and bolster our stubborn pursuit of it is the support and engagement of others.  We should aspire to a strategic advantage in innovating and commercializing together for broader purpose - to, like the American innovators Edison and Jobs, touch human beings and do business.  

For the next Steve Jobs is not likely to be an American, a Canadian, nor any individual, but a team that will reach beyond borders, disciplines, and the body of one person.