[11ren]

    # You don't want to be Tesla. He was one of the greatest inventors,
    but it's a sad, sad story. He couldn't commercialise anything, he
    could barely fund his own research. You'd want to be more like
    Edison. If you invent something, that doesn't necessarily help
    anybody. You've got to actually get it into the world; you've got
    to produce, make money doing it so you can fund it.

The other Edison vs Tesla difference that strikes a chord in me is:

    Edison: "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration."

    Telsa on Edison: "just a little theory and calculation would have saved him
    90 percent of the labour. But he had a veritable contempt for book
    learning and mathematical knowledge, trusting himself entirely to his
    inventor's instinct and practical American sense." 

Edison was a hacker - and I mean one who hacks, like a bad golfer or a bad novelist, but who actually gets the ball in the hole, and actually writes the novel.

When you are the only one who has done something, you are automatically the best. No matter how bad you are.

The second last quote sort of reinforces the "learn through mistakes" attitude of Edison:

    # The thing that matters is experience. We have lots of executives
    from failed companies; they learned a lot from these things. They
    say, 'We can't do that -- we tried that and it didn't work.' So
    failure is useful.

[mhartl]

It seems to me the ideal would be a combination of Edison and Tesla. There's no reason one person couldn't have both Edison's work capacity and Tesla's theoretical genius. Certainly many of the best scientists qualify: Newton, for example, or Euler. Euler was incredibly prolific---his lifetime output fills shelf upon shelf---and yet he was undeniably a mathematical genius as well. In music, J.S. Bach also fits the mold of incredibly hard-working genius.

[medianama]

I'd rather be Westinghouse. He didn't invent much but, bought the right's to Tesla's invention, successfully commercialized those and ultimately prevailed over Edison..

Interesting question - How do you look at yourself? Scientist -> Engineer -> Entrepreneur

[litewulf]

...kind of like that 37signals design post a few days ago, no?