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