Edison's work habits and thinking about failure

1. EDISON'S WORK HABITS
AND THINKING ABOUT FAILURE
• Yastee A. Shah
By:
• 16IT148
ID NO.:
• Creativity, Problem Solving &
Innovation.(HS133A)
Subject:

2. THOMAS EDISON’S CREATIVE THINKING HABITS
• Thomas Edison was granted 1,093 patents for inventions that ranged
from the lightbulb, typewriter, electric pen, phonograph, motion picture
camera—to the talking doll and a concrete house that could be built in
one day from a cast-iron mold.
• When he died in 1931, he left 3500 notebooks.
• The notebooks illustrate how Edison conceived his ideas from their
earliest inceptions and show in great detail how he developed and
implemented them.

3. SOME OF EDISON’S CREATIVE-THINKING STRATEGIES:
1. GO FOR QUANTITY
2. CHALLENGE ASSUMPTIONS
3. NOTHING IS WASTED
4. CONSTANTLY IMPROVE YOUR IDEAS AND PRODUCTS
AND THE IDEAS AND PRODUCTS OF OTHERS
5. JUST START ACTING CREATIVE

4. SUCCESS THROUGH FAILURE
• Failure happens. It happens all the time, to everyone, and sometimes can have
a bad effect on us depending on the way we react to it.
• Failure, like many other things, is something we have got used to through the
years.
• That makes him a true example of perseverance.
• What helped him was understanding a few things – defining success and
failure, realizing the inevitable connection between them, never giving up,
working hard, believing in himself and his ideas.
• Of course, in many situations things looked so hopeless and pointless that the
average person would have given up on his work. But not him

5. • Many people told him that he is wasting his time, his faith and
confidence were sometimes on the verge of being gone, but he
succeeded. Many times.
• The fruits of his labor were 1093 patents, including the bulb, the
phonograph, the motion picture camera, the printing telegraph
apparatus, typewriting machines, telephones and many other things
we can’t live without today.
• Failure must be understood perfectly in order
for us to be successful and follow our dreams.

6. • So let’s analyse Thomas Edison’s way of thinking by taking a look at his words.
1. ” I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
2. “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way
to succeed is always to try just one more time.”
3. “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine
percent perspiration.”
4. “There’s a way to do it better – find it.”
5.” When I have fully decided that a result is worth getting I go
ahead of it and make trial after trial until it comes.”
6. “We don’t know a millionth of one percent about anything.
“Without failure, we can’t succeed. They are connected in a way we can understand only if
we accept the former in order to reach the latter.”

7. SUMMARY OF THE IMPORTANT LESSONS THOMAS EDISON
WANTS EVERY GENERATION TO LEARN:
• Accept failure.
• Never give up.
• Work hard.
• Find a better way to do it.
• Try until you succeed.
• Learn and improve so that you don’t fail next time.
• Stay focused.

8. FAILURE IS A PART OF SUCCESS…
• Thomas Edison once said ,“I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that
won’t work.” What he is referring to is a cost effective Electric light bulb. He tried
10,000 times to make it work but fell short. His attempts were experiments and
he only needed one experiment to go right. Therefore he had not failed, but
learned another way that didn’t work.
• Success is defined as a favourable outcome. Failure is defined as a lack of success.
So does that mean that failure is the opposite of success?
• I think it depends on how we look at failure and how we act when we do fail. I
believe failure plays a large part in success or becoming successful. Thomas
Edison looked at failure as a learning opportunity.

9. How can we overcome failure in order to use it to reach our goals?
1. Forgive yourself.
2. Learn from your mistakes.
3. Avoid Failure through practice.

10. ABOUT SUCCESS…
• Success is moving from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm.
• The arrow that hits the bullseye is the result of a hundred misses.
I have gotten lots of results! I know several thousand things
that won’t work!” – Thomas Edison

11. LOOKING THROUGH DIFFERENT PERCEPTIONS…
If we look at problem as many way as possible , we may..
• Have different attempts and false starts.
• Improve our understanding..
• Make our idea visible..
• Became creative and innovative…

12. TURN FAILURE INTO SUCCESS…
Go into a fresh
start mindset-
More
intelligently
Take different
views of the
situation-
And look for
opportunities
Get rid of all
negative
emotions-
And learn from
feedback