- Tesla was the greatest inventor but had limited success in his life
- Today, Tesla would have great success since skills are now commoditized
- Having the idea (and legally protecting it) is now the most important thing
Nichola Tesla was arguably the greatest inventory ever. Unfortunately, he had very little success in his time. However, now some of his inventions, notably AC electricity, are far more common than some of Edison’s (DC electricity). Only problem was, during his time, it wasn’t so much what you knew or what you could do, but rather what you can make other people do. Edison did just that. Therefore, I shall compare Edison to Steve Jobs.
Steve Jobs co-founded Apple with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne despite Wozniak having all the technical know-how and the original idea. Wozniak was actually an electronics hacker and was swayed by Steve Jobs to start selling his personal computers. This business went on to become the giant that Apple Inc. is today. In this case, Wozniak was the “what you can do” (make the computer) and Jobs was the “what you can make others do” (make others buy the computer). That was in the 1970′s.
Today however, is the age of Tesla meaning today is the age of ideas. Before, if you had an idea, it would often be difficult to turn that great idea into a profitable idea. But today, having the great idea is the most vital thing in my mind. With intellectual property protection being what it is, having the idea is guaranteed to get you money. Just look at the Winklevoss brothers and Harvard Connections. They essentially just had an idea and ended up getting tens of millions of dollars from Mark Zuckerberg (although the exact amount differs based on what they were told they were going to get and what they actually got). Thus, they basically had a somewhat unique idea and became set for life. Their entire life has actually just been a series of ridiculous lawsuits, but that’s neither here nor there.
Further, with globalization and increased e-business, it is actually much easier to turn that idea into a profitable idea. If you do not have the expertise to turn that idea into reality, there is plenty of expertise available for hire online. For instance, if you want to make a website with some incredibly unique feature set but don’t have the programming skills, send that work over to India for inexpensive, pretty good quality work. Websites like elance.com and designcrowd are great for that.
Don’t get me wrong, having more than just an idea is ideal, but I believe it is now the most important step. Just today, Larry Page was appointed as CEO of Google again and said:
“You can invent the world’s greatest things, but if you just invent them, it doesn’t accomplish that much.”
The post The Age of Tesla appeared first on UniversityHub.
