Edison on Innovation: 102 Lessons in Creativity for Business and Beyond

3.12. Lesson 24: Make Defects Their Own Remedy

As a telegrapher, Edison achieved competence rather than mastery. He became a journeyman, not a genius, of the code key. Yet he was never content with confinement to journeyman work. For telegraphers in the 1860s and 1870s, receiving and transcribing long, complex newspaper stories was work reserved for the true masters, experts who had achieved consistent speed and accuracy.

Edison found it very hard to keep pace with these messages, but instead of despairing, he found in his weakness a source of strength, a spur to innovation. As noted in Lesson 17, one avenue of innovation Edison pursued was nontechnical. He developed a unique style of small, fast, highly legible handwriting. In addition to this ...