Edison failed time and time again while trying to find a filament that would safely burn for long periods of time. But how did he look at these repeated failures? With an OppThink attitude, of course, as evidenced by his famous quote:
“We now know a thousand ways not to build a light bulb.”
In other words, Edison took the belief most might have settled on ("I don't have a way to build a light bulb yet") and turned it into its opposite belief, shown above.
Not knowing something is knowledge in its own right. In fact, Edison's light bulb quote is related to one by fiction's greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes, who famously said:
"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
One can take an OppThink view of Edison's search for the light bulb and describe it this way: he eliminated the impossible filaments, and in the end, what was left was the filament that finally did work, and the truth of that successful filament's long lasting light changed our lives forever.
No comments:
Post a Comment