Nimble and forward looking is good. Unfortunately it seems in corporate evolution the Edisonian stogy model became the dominant meme. With some exceptions, I think corporate administrators just feel too uncomfortable in general with turning the minds in their companies loose.

Also I’m reading Leonard’s Mlodinow’s The Drunkard’s Walk about randomness and statistics and he brings up the point regarding the short sightedness, and statistical stupidity, of many corporations judging people on very short term successes and failures. Being nimble and forward-looking often involves giving people some freedom to fail which today corporate types seem very unwilling to do when people are crunching numbers every quarter, or every month.

Basic academic science, which Telsa was a part, also is a lot like an open source business model as the people producing knowledge are basically giving it away for free (there may be some arguments there for anyone who has ever paid a journal subscription fee).

Tesla was a fascinating fellow for sure and there are just too few interesting personalities in science today (exceptions for sure, Kary Mullis comes to mind and probably EO Wilson and Francis Collins).