#40 Insisting On The Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land and Instant: The Story of Polaroid

What I learned from reading Insisting On The Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land and Instant: The Story of Polaroid --- If you dream of something worth doing and then simply go to work on it, and don’t think anything of personalities, or emotional conflicts, or of money, or of family distractions; if you just think of, detail by detail, what you have to do next, it is a wonderful dream. [0:01]  Edwin Land was a pioneer whose inventions were dismissed, and yet he created a great company by dint of pure stubbornness. [2:33]  He [Steve Jobs] didn't yet have the skills to build a great company, but he admired those who had pulled it off and he would go to great lengths to meet them and learn from them. [3:03]  Steve admired many things about Land: his obsessive commitment to creating products of style, practicality, and great consumer appeal. His reliance on gut instinct rather than consumer research and the restless obsession and invention he brought to the company he founded. [4:07]  Recounting his life is a meditation on the nature of innovation. [5:15]  We use bull’s eye empiricism. We try everything but we try the right things first. [6:06] Land clearly did not wish to waste his powers on me too innovations [6:34]  Don’t do anything that someone else can do. Don’t undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible. [6:55]  He held that the business of business was something different, making things that people didn’t know they wanted until they were available. [7:26]  He thought and acted on a large stage. [8:34]  Over and over he talked about his obsessions: autonomy, learning, education, vision, perception, the mind, and the mining of exhausted veins of knowledge for new gold. [9:14]  Land on the problem with formal education: A student would get a message that a secret dream of greatness is a pipe dream. That it would be a long time before he makes a significant contribution, if ever. [13:18]  From this day forward, until the day you are