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

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

by Alan Axelrod
February 2008
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
192 pages
4h 1m
English
Jossey-Bass
Content preview from Edison on Innovation: 102 Lessons in Creativity for Business and Beyond

4.2. Lesson 26: Insure the Permanency of an Investment

Edison held that there was a "law in commercial things as in nature." He believed that if you attempted to "obtain more profit than the general average," you would be "immediately punished by competition." He therefore adopted a practice of "insuring the permanency of an investment" by lowering prices on his products sufficiently to remove any "inducement to others to come in and ruin" the market. That is, he strove to position himself so that no one could make what he made cheaper. Through a combination of advanced manufacturing and a willingness to reduce profit margin, Edison's early electric lamps were so inexpensive that he hoped "to make it positively impossible for [competition] to ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780787994594Purchase book