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Founders: #40 Insisting On The Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land and Instant: The Story of Polaroid

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What I learned from reading Insisting On The Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land and Instant: The Story of Polaroid --- If you dream of something worth doing and then simply go to work on it, and don’t think anything of personalities, or emotional conflicts, or of money, or of family distractions; if you just think of, detail by detail, what you have to do next, it is a wonderful dream. [0:01] Edwin Land was a pioneer whose inventions were dismissed, and yet he created a great company by dint of pure stubbornness. [2:33] He [Steve Jobs] didn't yet have the skills to build a great company, but he admired those who had pulled it off and he would go to great lengths to meet them and learn from them. [3:03] Steve admired many things about Land: his obsessive commitment to creating products of style, practicality, and great consumer appeal. His reliance on gut instinct rather than consumer research and the restless obsession and invention he brought to the company he founded. [4:07] Recounting his life is a meditation on the nature of innovation. [5:15] We use bull’s eye empiricism. We try everything but we try the right things first. [6:06] Land clearly did not wish to waste his powers

[00:00:00] If you dream of something worth doing and then simply go to work on it and don't think anything of personalities or emotional conflicts or money or family distractions, if you just think of detail by detail what you have to do next, it is a wonderful dream even though the end is a long way off. For there are about 5,000 steps to be taken before we realize it. Start taking the first 10 and stay making 20 after it. It is amazing how quickly you get through those first 5,000 steps. Rather, I should say, through the 4,990. The last 10 steps you never seem to work out, but you keep on…

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