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The Edisonian approach to innovation is characterized by trial and error discovery rather than a...

The Edisonian approach to innovation is characterized by trial and error discovery rather than a systematic theoretical approach. This may be a convenient term, but it is an inaccurate and misleading description of the method of invention actually used by Thomas Edison. An often quoted example of the Edisonian approach is the successful but protracted process he is said to have used to invent a practical incandescent light bulb. Trial and error alone cannot account for Edison's success with electric lighting when so many others failed (Friedel and Israel (1987) list 23 others) or his remarkable record of almost 1100 patents (see the list of Edison patents). The historical record indicates that Edison's approach was much more complex, that he made use of available theories and resorted to trial and error only when no adequate theory existed. Based on detailed study of his notebooks a number of scholars have pointed out that Edison generally resorted to trial and error in the absence of adequate theories. For example, in developing the carbon microphone (or carbon grain transmitter) that became the basis of telephones of the next hundred years, Edison and his co-workers tried