Find Market First ,Invention later: A Lesson from Edison's Life

Here is an interesting and cautionary bit of information for budding entrepreneurs from Edison on Innovation by Alan Axelrod.Edison obtained his first patent for an electric vote recorder in 1868. Edison had invented that with an intention of selling it to local, state and federal legislative bodies, having simply assumed that these customers would welcome a quick and efficient way of recording the many votes they took in the course of the work. In fact, when Edison demonstrated the device, he discovered that the very last thing legislators wanted was a quick and efficient means of voting. They had grown accustomed to exploiting the laborious and antiquated process of the roll call vote to gain much-needed time for last-minute cajoling and the marshaling of required votes. From this initial popular failure, Edison drew a valuable lesson. He resolved from then on to determine--firsthand--the existence of a market and a need before embarking on any other invention. For him, that lesson was sufficient to turn momentary failure into lifelong success. Nothing, Edison believed, was truly a failure if you managed to learn something from it.