This year’s Lemelson-MIT Invention Index makes an interesting read. The following infographic shows who the 1010 respondents (16-25 year old) thought was the greatest innovator of all time.
Make sense what you may but it seems rather bizarre to me that Steve Jobs, who was a genius in marketing and I adore him for all he has given us, comes as second to Edison in the list of inventors of all time. The secret may lie in the way ‘inventor’ is being understood by these young voters. As for what makes an inventor, according to a Lemelson-MIT press release, “More than half (55 percent) of young Americans cite creativity as the quality that best describes an inventor. Fewer think inventors are people who are problem solvers (24 percent), intelligent (13 percent), employed in a technical field (4 percent) or nerdy or quirky (3 percent).”
Lemelson-MIT Invention Index Also you may want to read techjournal