I have just read and then reviewed Edmund Morris’ latest biography, Edison. There is much of value to be learned from Thomas Edison’s pragmatic approach to business opportunities. His relentless experimentation led to 1,093 (single or joint) patents of breakthrough inventions or innovations that have had high-impact throughout the world.

As Matt Ridley observes in How Innovation Happens, “He remained relentlessly focused on finding out what the world needed and then inventing ways [as well as products] of meeting those needs, rather than the other way around. The method of invention was always trial and error. In developing the nickel-iron battery his employees undertook 50,000 experiments. He stuffed his workshops with every kind of material, tool and book. Invention, he famously said, is 1 per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration. Yet in effect what he was doing was not invention, so much as innovation: turning ideas into practical, reliable, and affordable reality.”

Keep in mind, also, my favorite Edison observation: “Vision without execution is hallucination.”

Here are two other books I highly recommend: Stefan H. Thomke’s Experimentation Works: The Surprising Power of Business Experiments (February 18, 2020) and The Power of Experiments: Decision Making in a Data-Driven World (March 3, 2020) co-authored by Michael Luca  and Max H. Bazerman.