Heritage Images / Hulton Archive
Patent drawing for Nikola Tesla ’ s Westinghouse electric motor .
Edison , who worked manically and completely failed to defeat Tesla ’ s operating system for the global electrical grid ( alternating current ). And yet , for all of Tesla ’ s status among cultists , and all the relevance of his inventions to our modern lives , it is Edison who still continues to be remembered as an American hero .
Unlike Edison , Tesla was chimeric , that is , he was like the ancient , mythical beast that was part lion , dragon and snake . In the Greek myth , the monster is slain by the hero Bellerophon , who rides Pegasus , but later falls from the winged horse . Metaphorically , to become chimeric is to embody different kinds of human creativity ; chimeric transformation is what Tesla showed us , who endured many trials of fire as he transformed himself from an electrical engineer fixing Edison ’ s early projects to the systemic thinker who was dreaming up solutions for universal clean energy and world peace . A disruptive innovator , he set the tone for generations .
What does Tesla offer for today ’ s global economy ? The inventor looked at changing entire systems . How can we more efficiently move power and information ? Remember the electrical grid is antiquated and based on century-old technology .
What about the creative process needed to provoke disruptive innovation ? Tesla showed us that we need to visualize what we need to do , then draw or animate designs and make models — and tinker with them .
Failure is a key part of the learning process and is something we don ’ t readily embrace in Western culture .
The Maker Faire movement , for example , is promoting this process through 3-D printing , robotics and coding . At Maker Faires , the kids come in and just play with things to see how they work . That ’ s the future of innovation , not manically teaching to standardized tests , offering more
PowerPoints or brow-beating students into getting perfect grades .
Granted , nearly every major system is in need of re-invention , which is a key component of Tesla ’ s creative machine . Break it down , rebuild it and make it better . That applies to everything from urban transportation to the political machines that need to be re-engineered to provide broadly shared prosperity and a spiritual economics . It ’ s Tesla-like innovation that will engender a more compassionate capitalism and political systems .
John Wasik — author of 15 books and more than 1,000 columns , blogs and articles for the Wall Street Journal , The New York Times , Reuters , Forbes and Bloomberg News — has been researching Tesla for more than a decade . This article has been excerpted from Lightning Strikes : Timeless Lessons in Creativity from the Life and Work of Nikola Tesla ( Sterling , 2016 ).
www . MoAF . org | Winter 2017 | FINANCIAL HISTORY 19