[doxcf434]

Watching the recent PBS documentary on Edison was pretty amazing just how easy it is to connect to his mentality and astonishing challenges, and investors like SV today, calling him the original Jobs or Musk is really an understatement. Once you solve the 40yr problem of the incandescent light bulb, oh then you just need to knock out a power plant, grid, internal wiring and digging up the streets to get your product to market. Mean while JP Morgen him self is breathing down your neck the whole time. Amazing. ;)

Great documentary can be found here: ;) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/edison/

[snowwrestler]

I thought the interesting bit about the light bulb was that Edison recognized the reality that it was a systems problem (electric lighting), not a product problem (light bulb).

Finding a long-lasting bulb filament was, to Edison, basically an implementation detail. But he knew it wouldn't catch on without a full system to power it that was mechanically and economically sustainable.

It's analogous to Apple's approach to a smartphone. The iPhone succeeded not just because it was a good piece of hardware running a good OS, but because of the systems that supported it. When it launched, iTunes was running on a ton of computers already thanks to the iPod, so that's how Apple synced personal data and updated the OS.

And then when they released the SDK, they again took a systems approach--not just a collection of APIs to build apps, but a whole networked and managed online store for qualifying, distributing, and updating the apps.