At Work With Thomas Edison by Blaine McCormick (2001, Paperback)

In his lifetime, Thomas Edison took out over 1000 patents and made several lifetime fortunes for several of these inventions including his most famous inventions the phonograph and the light bulb. These successes were the end results of countless mistakes, failures, and huge leaps of faith.

Edison was a very unique individual. Unlike many inventors, few of his inventions were actual discoveries. Most of his work stemmed from long hours, weeks, months, or even years trying to solve a particular problem or making an existing product better or more useful. Moreover, Edison did not attribute any sort of brilliance or genius to his inventions. Instead, he applauded the dedicated efforts of his team of employees and his own ability to gather creative individuals that could come up with the innovative solutions needed top make such endeavors succeed.

Like Edison, At Work With Thomas Edison: 10 Business Lessons from America's Greatest Innovator is also truly unique. The author has created a wonderful testament to Edison, showing both his weaknesses and his strengths in business and in his life. This in itself makes for an intriguing read. However, the author then extracts from Edison the lessons he learned from these incidents. Interestingly enough, Edison recreated his biggest weaknesses (namely his lack of formal education and his deafness) into his greatest advantages (namely creativity and focus). He also felt that he learned far more from his failures than his successes. This aspect of the book is both directly relatable to modern business and quite inspirational.