Edison and the Business of Innovation

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 heard about it

• Sarah Guo’s thread — a reply to her question on X, March 2025: “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?” The full list of replies is on Is There a Book… (tweet).

Connections

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