5.1. Lesson 33: Take a Reverse Inventory

A traditional inventory is a list of supplies, goods, and merchandise a business has on hand. When Edison set up his first laboratory-workshop in Newark, New Jersey, he sat down with the man who would become his longest-serving assistant and collaborator, Charles Batchelor, and drew up an inventory not of the stuff they had on hand but of things they could make—products that were both feasible and marketable, that not only could be invented but would support the enterprise on which the pair had just embarked. Edison entered the mainstream of his creative career by drawing up an inventory of his creative imagination.

NOTE

A good way for a would-be innovator to get started in the business of innovation ...

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