Business: The Quintessential Innovator

Where are you, Edison, now that we need you?

He was an odd sort of hero. A millionaire who often lived like a bum, sleeping in a closet with his clothes on—because he believed that taking them off promoted insomnia—and spitting on the floor even in his cherished laboratories. A picturesque swearer who hired assistants whom George Bernard Shaw called "sensitive, cheerful and profane; liars, braggarts and hustlers." A would-be tycoon so crotchety and bullheaded that he could give little credit to the ideas of others; so inept in business matters that he lost...