xii This volume... is, in fact, a book for anyone who needs or wants to be creative - on demand,
practically anywhere, practically anytime.
p.13 Clearly, Edison viewed every attempted solution to every perceived problem - no matter how
apparently casual or even trivial - as a deliberate, fully conscious experiment. Moreover, he apparently
regarded every problem he encountered not as an obstacle, an annoyance, a threat, or a defeat, but as a welcoming
invitation to experiment.
p.17 Creative knowledge means knowing the potential of many things - forces, components,
design elements, and so on - so that these may be combined into new or improved devices. For the inventor
and innovator, knowledge is a matter of mastering the vocabulary of physical reality. [JLJ - In a game we might become interested
in the potential of a piece to become part of a creative solution, possibly even one that we discover at a later point in
time, as the game progresses]
p.21 For Edison, creativity was always more a matter of investigative labor than of imaginative inspiration.
p.22 Edison was always more interested in the properties of substances - in which he saw the potential
for practical, creative application - than in theories about how things worked.
p.37 Edison welcomed problems because he understood that a problem contains the seed of its own
solution.
p.46 Possessing a fine creative imagination - whatever that may be - is doubtless valuable for any inventor
or innovator, but it is at least equally certain that the more you know about your field and the fields related to
yours the better your chances of creating and selling useful and successful products and processes
p.52 Edison's chief approach to innovation was to build on existing or emerging technology by first
identifying the weakest points in that technology and then planning how he would create improvements on them. The
weaker the point he could identify, the greater the improvement he could make.
p.53-54 Edison the inventor and industrialist regarded himself first and foremost as a collector.
He collected ideas, he collected patents, he collected breakthroughs, he collected failures... Creative momentum,
Edison believed, was a most precious commodity. To avoid squandering it... Edison actually planned to obtain "a quantity of
every known substance on the face of the globe."
p.67 Edison's surviving notes provide a unique window into the inventor's imagination,
and they suggest that the business of invention and the free-form activity of make-believe have strong roots in common.
p.67 Invention is hard work, but it is also play... most successful inventors
and innovators never begin with rules and limits. Instead they give free reign to the imagination and do not censor
their ideas.
p.70 Innovation begins with dissatisfaction. It is an itch that demands to be scratched.
p.90-91 Know the known. Reap the results of the labor of others. Build on their successes as well as their
failures. Define the points of departure, then depart from them, rather than starting over at someone else's beginning...
Invention and innovation are launched on thought born of observation. In the absence of either thought or observation,
nothing is created.
p.130 Creativity does not start by formulating solutions - it starts by defining problems.
You don't need the spark of genius. You do need the kernel of the problem: its simplest statement... it will, astoundingly,
become the seed of the solution you seek.
p.138 An inventor and innovator needs to possess two items of knowledge above all others:
he needs to know what he knows and know what he does not know.
