#134 Edwin Land (Polaroid vs Kodak)

**David Senra** (0:00)
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While Polaroid's products may have achieved an iconic status in our popular culture, their progenitor, Edwin Land, remains largely an unknown and underappreciated figure in our nation's technological history. This is somewhat surprising, as his accomplishments meet or surpass those of many better known personalities.
He died in 1991 with 535 patents to his credit, third in US history. His honorary doctorate degrees, too numerous to list, come from the most distinguished academic institutions, including Harvard, Yale, and Columbia. He received virtually every distinction the scientific community had to offer, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of the Science, the National Inventors Hall of Fame, and membership into the prestigious Royal Society of London. Land was included on life's list of the 100 most important Americans of the 20th century.
Beyond his contributions to photography, most people use his first invention, the plastic sheet polarizer, just about every day, whether in sunglasses, camera filters, LCD displays, scientific and medical instruments, or car windshields. Perhaps most importantly, his contribution to America's defense and intelligence efforts over three decades and in service of seven presidents, performed mostly in secret with no public fanfare, but to a high amount of praise from our country's scientific elite, may be the true measure of Land's stature and the pantheon of great American minds and entrepreneurs. In so many ways, on so many occasions, Land's life was a manifestation of the infatigable can-do attitude he embraced and encouraged others to follow.
He sought to build an organization in his own image, one that could pursue its dreams instinctively, unshackled by some of the restraints imposed both internally and externally upon other companies.
In describing Polaroid, distinguished Harvard Business School professor Joseph L. Bauer once noted, to understand Polaroid, you must understand Land. Land is creative, and he has the well-grounded suspicion that good, careful, systematic planning can kill a creative company. Instead, Land committed Polaroid on a course to pursue the same kind of ambitious challenges that he had set for himself when he was still a teenager. There's a direct quote from Land now. Pick problems that are important and nearly impossible to solve. Pick problems that are the result of sensing deep and possibly unarticulated human needs.
Pick problems that will draw on the diversity of human knowledge for their solution. And where that knowledge is inadequate, fill the gaps with basic scientific exploration. Involve all the members of the organization in the sense of adventure and accomplishment, so that a large part of life's rewards would come from this involvement. Land has left a special legacy in the world of business, one that would become a model for companies of the future. Not surprisingly, Steve Jobs was one of Land's most dedicated fans. In the words of John Scully, whom Jobs recruited to lead Apple in 1983, these were two geniuses who totally understood each other from the vantage point that they knew how to take technology and transform it into magic.
Not only was Land one of the great inventors of our time, said Jobs in a 1985 interview, but more importantly, he saw the intersection of art and science and business and built an organization to reflect that. The man is a national treasure. I don't understand why people like that can't be held up as models. This is the most incredible thing to be. Not an astronaut, not a football player, but this. Early in his career, Jobs had the opportunity to visit with Land, who described to Jobs his vision for the technology company of the future.