Founders
Episode 134 #134 Edwin Land (Polaroid vs Kodak)
Founders

Episode 134: #134 Edwin Land (Polaroid vs Kodak)

Founders

Episode 134

#134 Edwin Land (Polaroid vs Kodak)

David Senra is the host of Founders, where he studies history's greatest entrepreneurs. This is what he learned from reading A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald Fierstein.

What I learned from reading A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald Fierstein. 

----

Come see a live show with me and Patrick O'Shaughnessy from Invest Like The Best on October 19th in New York City. 

Get your tickets here

----

Subscribe to listen to Founders Premium — Subscribers can listen to Ask Me Anything (AMA) episodes and every bonus episode. 

---

[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 explained by his inscrutable personality, his simple shyness, and his blinders-on mentality when it came to his life’s work.  

[6:19] He sees himself as determined, iron-willed and hard driving, a man who will not rest until he has conquered whatever problem is at hand.  

[6:31] The formula for accomplishment he practiced throughout his life—creative wonderment and intellectual curiosity followed by inexhaustible effort—remains a model that should inform and inspire us all, no matter the particular field of our endeavor.  

[8:56] He strongly believed that concentrated focus could also produce extraordinary results for others. Late in his career, Land recalled that his “whole life has been spent trying to teach people that intense concentration for hour after hour can bring out in people resources they didn’t know they had.” 

[16:24] A way to describe Edwin Land: “a state of mind that includes curiosity, an idealism which is dissatisfied with the restrictions and imperfections of the present, a great inward urge for discovery and an ability to translate this dissatisfaction and inward urge into constructive achievement.”  

[21:43] How to do something difficult: You always start with a fantasy. Part of the fantasy technique is to visualize something as perfect. Then with the experiments you work back from the fantasy to reality, hacking away at the components.  

[24:34] Land had an extraordinary curiosity about everything and the discipline to satisfy it.  

[28:14] Eisenhower wanted to know what the Russians were up to. Land told Eisenhower, “Well, why don’t we take a look and find out.”  

[31:53] One of Land’s tenets: “If you can state a problem, then you can solve it. From then on it’s just hard work.”  

[45:13] Land on why he had to sue Kodak: This would be our obligation even if one-step photography were but one component of our business. Where it is our whole field and where we have dedicated our whole scientific and industrial career to bringing this previously non-existent field to full technological and commercial fruition, our manifest duty to our shareholders is vigorously to assert our patents.  

[53:26] Kodak underestimated somebody you should never underestimate

[59:47] A summary of Land’s philosophy on building a technology company: Creation of a new technology requires that a single individual have in mind the objective to be reached. This master plan must be supported by the efforts of many others but the single dominant individual must constantly assure himself that the individual efforts complement one another and create support for an integrated system.  

I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.”— Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book. It's good for you. It's good for Founders. A list of all the books featured on Founders Podcast.

#134 Edwin Land (Polaroid vs Kodak)

Introduction

"While Polaroid's products may have achieved an iconic status in our public culture, their progenitor, Edwin Land remains largely an unknown and underappreciated figure in our nation's technological history. This is somewhat surprising as his accomplishments meet or surpass those of many better-known personalities. He died in 1991 with 535 patents to his credit, third in U.S. history." "His honorary doctor 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 had to offer, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Science, the National Inventors Hall of Fame and membership into the prestigious Royal Society of London."

"Land was included on life's list of the 100 most important Americans of the 20th century. Beyond his contributions to photography, most people use his first invention, the plastic sheet polarizer just about every day, whether in sunglasses, camera filters, LCD displays, scientific and medical instruments or car windshields." "Perhaps most importantly, his contribution to America's defense and intelligent efforts over three decades and in service of seven presidents performed mostly in secret with no public fanfare, but to a high amount of praise from our country's scientific elite may be the true measure of Land's stature in the pantheon of great American minds and entrepreneurs. 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." "He sought to build an organization in his own image, one that could pursue its dreams instinctively, unshackled by some of the restraints imposed both internally and externally upon other companies. In describing Polaroid, distinguished Harvard Business School professor Joseph L. Bower once noted, 'To understand Polaroid, you must understand Land.'"

"Land is creative, and he has the well-grounded suspicion that good, careful, systematic planning can kill a creative company. Instead, Land committed Polaroid on a course to pursue the same kind of ambitious challenges that he had set for himself when he was still a teenager." This is a direct quote from Land now. "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."

"Land has left a special legacy in the world of business, one that would become a model for companies of the future. Not surprisingly, Steve Jobs was one of Land's most dedicated fans. In the words of John Sculley, whom Jobs recruited to lead Apple in 1983, 'These were two geniuses who totally understood each other from the vantage point that they knew how to take technology and transform it into magic.'" "'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.'"

"Early in his career, Jobs had the opportunity to visit with Land, who described to Jobs his vision for the technology company of the future. Jobs confessed to a reporter that getting to meet Land was like visiting a shrine. Many years later, Jobs' admiring assured Land that in building Apple, he had tried to emulate the ideas Land had described to him. The influence that Land had on Jobs is readily apparent to anyone who is familiar with their respective careers." "As one journalist noted, 'They were a pair of college dropouts with big ideas. Both were driven, demanding, and stubborn, qualities that led them to great things. From the corporate culture Jobs created at Apple to his widely anticipated product introductions at each Apple shareholder meeting, Jobs arguably became the Edwin Land of his generation.'"

"In 2010, when Jobs was previewing Apple's iPad for some journalists prior to its introduction, he was asked, 'What consumer and market research had been conducted to inform Apple's development process.' Jobs reply was, 'Pure Land,' almost a verbatim reprise of comments Land had made many times throughout his career. None. It isn't the consumer's job to know what they want." "For Land as well as Jobs, entrepreneurial invention was the process of making what the consumer can't even imagine. To a large extent, Land's relative anonymity can perhaps best be explained by his inscrutable personality, his simple shyness and his blinders on mentality when it came to his life's work. Of course, despite his prodigious accomplishments and many inspirational and worthy traits, Edwin Land shared with the rest of us, all the frailties of the human experience."

"To the extent this book may seem like an homage to him, it is not meant to canonize him in total disregard of his shortcomings, notably his enormous ego and his unrelenting stubbornness. Land's vision of himself does not take into account the possible imbalance between his all-consuming work and his personal life. And it does not include the perspective of some employees who find him difficult, overly demanding and miserly in direct praise." "He sees himself as determined, iron-willed, and hard-driving, a man who will not rest until he's conquered whatever problem is at hand. Land passed away on March 1, 1991, yet his legacy endures. The formula for accomplishment that he practiced throughout his life, creative wonderment and intellectual curiosity followed by inexhaustible effort remains a model that should inform and inspire us all, no matter the particular field of our endeavor."

That was an excerpt from the book that I wanna talk to you about today, A Triumph of Genius, Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald Fierstein. So there's a lot to get to. Let's go ahead and jump into it. I want to draw your attention to this one sentence that appears in the prologue of this book. And I think it's a great one sentence summary about the personality of the truly unique person that Edwin Land was. And it says, "As a colleague acknowledged many years later, this man never had an ordinary reaction to anything." And before the author gets into the actual case, he gives us a lot of -- he did a lot of research.

Access the full transcript
Sign in or register to view episode transcripts.

Contact

Get in touch at help@joincolossus.com