Presenting Your Ideas

Thomas Edison is known for inventing the lightbulb, motion picture camera, the electric utility system and many more things

But he wasn’t the most brilliant innovator or best technician of his time - many would argue that was his competitor, Nikola Tesla.

So why do we know of Edison, but not of Tesla’s work?

Edison understood that the presentation of an invention was often more crucial than the invention itself. His mastery lay in showmanship and marketing acumen, that Tesla couldn’t really match.

He designed bulbs to look and operate like gas lamps, so people would get on board. He chose his electric lighting systems to go in financial institutions who would be perfect early adopters. His lab became a carefully orchestrated stage for demonstrations, and he dubbed it the ‘Invention Factory’

Although Tesla’s AC system was more efficient, Edison’s relentless marketing gave him market cap. He even went to the lengths of publicly electrocuting animals, to demonstrate the ‘danger’ of Tesla’s invention.

His key skills were market understanding, strategic positioning, narrative creation and accessibility to non-experts.

If we think of the best coaches? They’re not always the most in demand - because of their inability to weave narrative and create a spectacle around the work that they’re doing.

The most popular ones? They don’t always ‘shout loudest’, or at least they don’t have to.

Once you understand that your ability to communicate your work and your worth is nearly always more important than the work itself?

You might change where you invest your time

Or where you invest your money

Even how you view ‘content’ in the first place