#134 Edwin Land (Polaroid vs Kodak)

What I learned from reading A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald Fierstein.  ---- [0:21] He died in 1991 with 535 patents to his credit, third in U.S. history. His honorary doctorate degrees, too numerous to list, come from the most distinguished academic institutions, including Harvard, Yale, and Columbia. He received virtually every distinction the scientific community has to offer, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Science, the National Inventors Hall of Fame, and membership in the prestigious Royal Society of London. Land was included on Life’s list of the 100 most important Americans of the twentieth century.   [1:35]  In so many ways, on so many occasions, Land’s life was a manifestation of the indefatigable can-do attitude he embraced and encouraged others to follow.  [2:15] Land has the well-grounded suspicion that good, careful, systematic planning can kill a creative company.   [2:34] Pick problems that are important and nearly impossible to solve, pick problems that are the result of sensing deep and possibly unarticulated human needs, pick problems that will draw on the diversity of human knowledge for their solution, and where that knowledge is inadequate, fill the gaps with basic scientific exploration—involve all the members of the organization in the sense of adventure and accomplishment, so that a large part of life’s rewards would come from this involvement.   [3:30] Steve Jobs was one of Land’s most dedicated fans: “Not only was [Land] one of the great inventors of our time,” said Jobs in a 1985 interview, “but, more importantly, he saw the intersection of art and science and business and built an organization to reflect that. . . . The man is a national treasure, I don’t understand why people like that can’t be held up as models. This is the most incredible thing to be—not an astronaut, not a football player—but this.”  [5:22] Land’s relative anonymity can perhaps best be e