Analysis
During the early 1870s, Edison came into himself as an
inventor and a businessman. Unfortunately, this process did not
happen smoothly. He made great mistakes during this period, both
in choosing partners and in conducting business transactions. At
first, he tended to pick business partners from his associates
in the telegraph business, only to become angry when they used
their superior business acumen to earn a greater share of the business
revenue. And his fiasco with the quadruplex cast a shadow over
his reputation. One biographer says, "While his reputation as a
maverick grew, so did his status as a talented inventor."
Despite these mistakes, Edison learned valuable lessons
about the relationship of business to invention. He began to correct
some of his monetary mistakes and educate himself on the business world.
His experience with the vote recorder, for example, taught him
that inventions needed a market in order to be successful. After his
humiliating experience in Washington, Edison learned to do thorough
market research and to give careful consideration to the economic
potential of his inventions. Edison was not the free-spirited inventor
that some historians have made him out to be. He was a businessman,
and he did not bother with inventions unless he believed they would
make money someday.
His manufacturing shops in Newark were a predecessor for
his Menlo Park laboratory. At the Newark shops, Edison created
the job environment he would have liked for himself: a loose structure, with
an emphasis on innovation and hard work. He rewarded workers who
were loyal and creative, but he made great demands of all of his
employees. Only twenty-four years old, Edison could stay up until
all hours of the night and put great energy into products being
manufactured at the shops. He expected his workers to do the same.
Later on, Edison brought this same employer persona to his laboratories
in Menlo Park and West Orange.
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