58: How Edison Innovations Finds the Gaps in the Market

Edison Innovations has built a reputation for using crowdsourcing and virtual research technologies combined with strategic marketing and business planning to offer a new dimension in developing new products and services. I invited its founder and CEO, Larry MacDonald on the podcast to learn more about the story behind the company and how it got its name. Steve Jobs once said, "Some say, give the customers what they want. But that's not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do." Larry shares his take on this quote and discusses how his design-thinking approach to innovation was inspired by playing with Lego bricks. We talk about how technology can monitor what students have learned so they can relearn the foundational material they have missed school due to sickness. He also shares many stories of other innovations that he has worked with and his lessons learned along the way.