Polaroid founder Edwin Land is one of the most innovative inventors to have ever lived. Steve Jobs considered him one of his greatest heroes. On this episode we explore the methods and strategies he used to build the beautiful products that he did. 00:00 The Eureka Moment: Birth of the Polaroid Camera 04:30 Early Life: High Agency Behavior 07:00 The Obsession with Polarization 09:30 From Harvard to Independent Research 16:40 Founding Polaroid: The Early Struggles 28:00 Wartime Innovations and Contributions 30:30 Maintaining The Vision 34:10 The Birth of the Instant Camera 37:00 Polaroid's Marketing Genius 38:30 The SX-70: A Revolutionary Camera 42:30 PolaVision: A Catastrophic Flop 45:50 Edwin Land's Legacy and Lessons 46:00 Final Takeaways and Reflections --- HTTOTW Premium - Sign up to get all endnotes and special episodes Gains In Bulk - Use this link and use code Ben for 20% off VanMan - Use code TakeOver10 for 10% off Founders Podcast Speechify.com - Use code Ben for 15% off --- Email me with feedback: [email protected] Need a speaker for your next event or corporate retreat? Email [email protected]
Chapter 1: What was the eureka moment for Edwin Land?
Edwin Land was on his regular family vacation to Santa Fe, New Mexico. He had just snapped a picture of his daughter when she asked him a question that would change history forever. Why can't I see it now? Most parents would have given a flippant answer. That isn't how cameras work. That isn't how the world works.
But Edwin Land wasn't most people, and he fell silent as he repeated the question in his head over and over. Why can't she see it now? It was one of those eureka moments. Immediately, Land knew there was something there. Go with your mother, he told her. I need to think. It was a brisk but beautiful winter day with an inch of snow on the ground. He started walking around.
His family might have been a million miles away for all he cared. He was turning the question and the solution over in his mind. Land was already a successful businessman and inventor, and he had recently been working on a couple of inventions for the military that involved film and photography. So he had the technical knowledge to sketch out a plan in his mind.
And by the end of the walk, he had the broad outline. The Polaroid camera was already being born in his brain. I love that story because I think it illustrates something important about Edwin Land and about invention. I think it shows that a life of science and research is not incompatible with an adventurous and exciting life.
Chapter 2: What were Edwin Land's early life challenges?
In his time, Edwin Land built not just cameras and polarized materials, but spy planes, rockets, projectors, and more. He felt that scientists should embrace a sense of, quote, delight and adventure. And he decried what he called the cold formalism of modern science. He described research as a, quote, search for beauty in addiction and a necessity.
After one demonstration of a new technology, one questioner repeatedly questioned the marketability of his new invention. Land snapped back at him. He said that this obsession with money needed to end. Quote, put an end to this phony nonsense of industrial structure. It turns off young people. The only thing that matters is the bottom line. What a presumptuous thing to say.
The bottom line's in heaven. The real business of business is building things. So today we are talking about Edwin Land, the founder of Polaroid and a great man, a man who saw the beauty and adventure of building new things. Welcome to How to Take Over the World.
I'm going to show you how great I am. I just want to say from the bottom of my heart, I'd like to take this chance to apologize to absolutely nobody.
Hello, and welcome to How to Take Over the World. This is Ben Wilson. Today, we are talking about Edwin Land, the great scientist, inventor, and entrepreneur. I came to learn about Edwin Land because he was one of the major heroes of Steve Jobs. Steve actually said that he is the ideal that most people should pursue. He said, speaking of Land, quote, "'The man is a national treasure.
"'I don't understand why people like that "'can't be held up as models. "'That is the most incredible thing to be. "'Not an astronaut, not a football player, but this.'" So I thought, if Steve thinks he is so great, then he's worth learning about. And sure enough, I loved this story. And I learned so much from it.
For this episode, I used the very thorough biography, Insisting on the Impossible, The Life of Edwin Land by Victor McElhenney, which I highly recommend. Great book. A little hard to find, but if you can get it, a really, really inspiring biography. So let's get into it. This is The Life of Edwin Land. But first, a word from our sponsor, Gaines in Bulk.
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Chapter 3: How did Edwin Land innovate during wartime?
Chapter 4: What led to the founding of Polaroid?
Chapter 5: How did Edwin Land's obsession with optics shape his career?
Creatine is one of the most studied and proven supplements in the world, and it's not just for bodybuilders. Yes, it does lead to increased muscle strength and power, but also it leads to enhanced recovery and endurance and can even help improve mental clarity and performance. I can't recommend it highly enough. And Gaines has other great products as well.
They have great pre-workout, great protein powder. So check them out at gainsinbulk.com slash Ben and use code Ben, that's my name, Ben, for 25% off. Edwin Land was born in 1909 to a upper middle class Jewish family in Connecticut. He was a precocious and high agency young child. So when he's only five years old, he takes apart his family's phonograph.
That's the Thomas Edison invention that plays recorded sound. And he just wanted to see how it works. And before he can put it back together, his father gets home and his father is furious. He yells at young Edwin and gives him a spanking. Now, most people would learn their lesson that, you know, you can't take things apart and experiment on them without permission.
But Edwin Land actually learns the opposite lesson. He gets angry at his father and he says of this incident, remember, he's only five years old. This is what he says. From then on, I was totally stubborn about being blocked. Nothing or nobody could stop me from carrying through the execution of an experiment. Okay, this is ultra high agency behavior.
And if you haven't heard that term, high agency is the capacity to exert control over your life and take ownership over outcomes in your life. So in other words, it is the ability to break through barriers and act independently when others tell you no or resist your vision. You know, someone who's low agency just kind of accepts the world as it is.
So Edwin Land is ultra high agency, even as a five-year-old. By the way, if you want to learn more about how to be high agency, George Mack just wrote a very good essay on the concept. You can find it at highagency.com. And I really highly recommend that essay. I learned a ton from it. It also reminds me of a scene from one of my favorite movies from when I was a kid, Sergeant Bilko.
and sergeant bilko is about this sergeant bilko uh and he's an ultra corrupt army sergeant in charge of the motor pool at a military base but he's actually running a gambling ring out of the motor pool and they get a very straight edge new private in the motor pool so bilko asks him to do something very corrupt and this is what happens next you want me to turn the odometer back so
Yes. I can't do that, Sergeant. Can't! He said can't! Oh! Sergeant, you all right? Hey, man, can't is a four-letter word in this platoon.
Okay, this is basically what always happens to great leaders when someone tells them something is impossible. A full freak out, can't, he said can't. And that is how Edwin Land reacts against his father when he's only five, okay? So he's five years old, he's already high agency.
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Chapter 6: What marketing strategies did Polaroid use?
He's got his boring home life. He hires one assistant and works on the issue of manufacturing synthetic polarizer day and night. He's totally obsessed. I've talked before, especially in the Isaac Newton episode, about how these periods of intense focus can change your life. And Land has one of the best quotes about these periods I have ever read.
This is one of my favorite quotes ever, period, about anything. Here's what he said. He's describing the attitude. He says, you want to be almost alone with just a few friends. You want to be undisturbed. You want to be free to think, not for an hour at a time or three hours at a time, but for two days or two weeks, if possible, without interruption.
You don't want to drive the family car or go to parties. You wish people would just go away and leave you alone while you get something straight. Then you get it straight and you embody it. And during that period of embodiment, you have a feeling of almost divine guidance.
Then it is done and suddenly you are alone and you have to go back to your friends and the world around you and to all history to be refreshed, to feel alive and human once again. Okay, I love, you know, I already said this, two weeks can change your life. I love that he highlights actually that period, two days or two weeks, if possible.
There really is something special about how much you can get accomplished in two weeks of intense focus. All right, he has another great quote on this. He says, I find it is important to work intensively for long hours when I am beginning to see solutions to a problem. At such times, solutions seem to come welling up.
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Chapter 7: What were the key failures in Polaroid's history?
You are handling so many variables at a barely conscious level that you can't afford to be interrupted. If you are, it may take a year to cover the same ground you could cover otherwise in 60 hours. Okay, I love that. Something special happens. Divine guidance, he calls it.
And without that intense focus, it might take you a year, he says, to accomplish what you could in three days with that focus. I find that true in podcasting. It took me two weeks to figure out how to podcast and launch this podcast. It's true in writing and starting a new business or venture. In basically everything, something really special happens when you focus completely for a short burst.
Okay, so in New York, he basically cracks how to create synthetic polarizers. He calls it one of the great moments of his life. When it first comes out and he's done it, he's created this synthetic polarizer. not just the material to be created, but also he has to figure out how to manufacture it and how to manufacture it at scale.
Chapter 8: What is Edwin Land's legacy in innovation?
And so he does, he kind of cracks the code and he thinks his work is done. He gets some patents on it and he thinks he can now turn the work over to a big company and let them handle it. So he goes back to Harvard and resumes his studies. But of course, it turns out it's not that simple. Turning a concept into a mass-produced product turns out to be very difficult. You know, who would have known?
And it requires the attention and involvement of the inventor, of land. He's the one that knows the stuff backwards and forwards. No one else can do it for him. So at first, he tries to do this work while at Harvard. One professor is very impressed with him and lets him use the lab, even though he's just a second-year undergraduate. And this is amazing, right?
Other professors become very interested as well. And before you know it, all these people are trying to help him figure out polarization, how to do all this. And this reminds me of Arnold Schwarzenegger. And he talks about when he first starts taking bodybuilding seriously. He talks about how everyone in his little village, his hometown, spontaneously starts helping him in all these little ways.
They offer to do his chores for him. They give him their food at lunch. They say, you know, you're a big guy. You need this milk more than I do and start giving him stuff. When you have a big vision, people respond to that and they just start conspiring to help you. Same thing with Genghis Khan when he's young. People help him with stuff at great personal risk to themselves.
Big visions make people want to help you. But even with the use of these labs and all this kind of free help at Harvard, it's too much to run the company and study full-time simultaneously. So he eventually drops out of Harvard with a graduate student who had taught him some classes named George Wheelwright.
And together they start a corporation at first called Land Wheelwright, but this is the corporation that goes on to become Polaroid. Before we get into the history of Polaroid, I want to take a second to tell you about Van Man. They make all natural products that I use every day, like lotion and deodorant, and it is the best stuff. I love it. Completely all natural food grade ingredients.
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Whereas if you go and you look at some of these synthetic lotions, even the ones that say they're all natural, they have all of these chemicals that you can't even pronounce. And that's not the kind of stuff that I want ending up in my body. And look, everything that you put on your skin ends up in your bloodstream. Multiple studies are now showing that.
And so I use Van Man for their moisturizer, for their deodorant, for their lip balm. I use basically all their products. So you'll love it. Go to vanman.shop and use code TAKEOVER10 for 10% off. You won't regret it. So Land and Wheelwright set out to produce polarized materials with their new corporation. Land has the vision and the technical expertise and Wheelwright has some technical knowledge.
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