Thomas Edison: Success and Innovation through Failure

• Main Author: Wills, Ian (Author, http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/aut)
• Corporate Author: SpringerLink (Online service)
• Format: Electronic eBook
• Language: English
• Published: Cham : Springer International Publishing : Imprint: Springer, 2019.
• Edition: 1st ed. 2019.
• Series: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 52
• Subjects: Philosophy.; Technology-History.; Management.; Industrial management.; Philosophy of Technology.; History of Technology.; Innovation/Technology Management.

This book develops a systematic approach to the role of failure in innovation, using the laboratory notebooks of America's most successful inventor, Thomas Edison. It argues that Edison's active pursuit of failure and innovative uses of failure as a tool were crucial to his success. From t...

Table of Contents:

• Chapter 1. Introduction
• Part I: Edison and Failure Chapter
• 2. Success, Failure and Innovation: the Carbon Microphone
• Chapter 3. Failure and Success
• Chapter 4. Innovation and Systems
• Chapter 5. Innovation Must Fail
• Chapter 6. Catastrophic Failure
• Part II: Edison Science and Invention
• Chapter 7. Inventive Success: the Phonograph
• Chapter 8. Scientific Failure: Etheric Force
• Part III: Edison's World
• Chapter 9. Thomas Edison and Patents
• Chapter 10. The Edisonian Method: Trial and Error
• Part IV: Reversing Edison
• Chapter 11. Reverse Engineering
• Chapter 12. Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Notes.