Edison and the Business of Innovation

André Millard, Edison and the Business of Innovation (1990).

Why it’s on the list: Millard’s business history of the West Orange laboratory — Edison’s invention factory treated as an organisation with a payroll, a pipeline and a cost structure, rather than as a story about a man.

Where I saw it: In the replies to Sarah Guo’s March 22, 2025 question on X — “is there a book / essay about environments that best support scientific discovery? Not about specifically bell labs, cavendish, xerox parc, los alamos - but why these places were so productive?” Kyle saved the link and reconstructed the full reply-thread list on 2026-09-17; the whole recovered list is on Is There a Book… (tweet).

Metadata checked: Open Library (1990; 408 pages).

Connections

• Thomas Edison — subject.
• Bell Labs — the successor form of the same idea, industrialised.
• American Genesis — Hughes’s frame for exactly this transition.

Not yet read.