The 20 greatest innovators of all time

There are many groundbreaking ideas and invention designs. Using them could completely transform how we perceive the world and accomplish our daily tasks. A few inventions are so forward-looking that they set a precedent for future generations to follow. It seems that brilliant people can build anything you can think of, including gadgets, vehicles, and almost anything else.

Inventive thinking is usually characterized by breaking away from the status quo. Innovative methods can make old methods obsolete and introduce new, unanticipated paradigms. 

A true innovator is someone who innovates new ideas and brings them to life. 

Innovating means creating something that makes life better. Passion is the key to innovation. The world looks different to innovators. As a result, they get obsessed with making the world a better place. For-profit innovators are always trying to bring value to the market. Some people focus on pushing the human race forward through core research.

Whatever sector we're in, we're all relentlessly working to solve problems and create a better world.  Human civilization has witnessed many engineering marvels throughout history, some of which have improved quality of life and some of which have been destructive. 

On the other hand, in today’s fast-paced business world, keeping improving is an essential way to develop your innovator mindset and fill any skills gap your team may have.

The LinkedIn 2023 Most In-Demand Skills  shows that soft skills, both used inside the company (such as problem solving, leadership and decision making) and outside (reach and retain customers) are among the ones companies need most right now. So, let's take a look at the top 20 innovators of all time and the skills that made them succeed.

Here are the top 20 innovators of all time.

6 top soft skills for you and your team to achieve your goals.

In a world of automation, it’s soft skills that differentiate.

Here are the top 20 innovators of all time.

1. Thomas Edison 

Thomas Edison is one of the most important innovators and inventors in American history, the inventor of the first long-lasting, commercially viable incandescent light bulb. In addition to the phonograph and motion picture camera, he invented many other things. However, it was he who developed the first economically viable way to distribute light, heat, and power.

2. Steve Jobs

Apple founder Steve Jobs will go down in history as one of the greatest innovators. Steve Jobs was Apple's CEO in the 1980s and 1990s and again in the late 90s and 2000s. He helped develop the Mac, the iPod, and the iPhone.

This successful leader followed his path through simple soft skills, which made the difference to turn his ideas into reality.

3. Nikola Tesla

Nikola was an amazing inventor, engineer, and futurist. A man known for his crazy experiments and colorful personality, Tesla's work in regard to power production and transmission was way ahead of its time.

Even though being known as a workaholic, he didn’t get his hands into any work before he had fully thought about what he was going to do, so he was sure that he wasn’t going to waste time, energy and resources in the wrong place.

4. Bill Gates

Bill founded Microsoft  and built it into an unmatched software giant, then left to start the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation , a philanthropic enterprise to improve global healthcare and reduce poverty. He claims that success came through some smart habits that made him able to find his passion and develop the path to leadership.

5. Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin was a brilliant polymath, inventor, political theorist, scientist, statesman, and writer who was one of the founding fathers of the United States. Despite a prodigious scientific mind and a wide range of interests, he's most famous for his electricity and lightning experiments.

6. Leonardo Da Vinci

A philosopher, engineer, and inventor, Leonardo was the original "Renaissance man." His paintings (the Last Supper and Mona Lisa) are the most famous, but he was also a painter. The drawings he left behind depicted future technologies (helicopter, tank, solar power).

7. Alexander Graham Bell

An engineer and inventor from Scotland, Alexander Graham got the US patent for the phone in 1876. A great figure of the nineteenth century, he worked in telecommunications, aeronautics, and many other fields (he invented the metal detector).

8. Sandford Fleming

Engineer, surveyor, and mapmaker Sandford helped build the transcontinental railways of the 19th century. The standard time zones we use today were also invented by him.

9. Marie Curie

Marie Sklodowska Curie was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1867 and studied physics and mathematics at the Sorbonne. After earning her doctorate in 1903, Curie became Professor of General Physics at the Sorbonne for the first time in 1906. After Marie Curie discovered radioactivity in 1896, she isolated radium. Curie brought portable x-ray machines to the battlefield during World War 1, making x-rays one of the greatest advances in medicine. 

A pioneering physicist and chemist, Marie was known for her breakthrough ideas on radioactivity and her discovery of two elements. She was the first female Nobel laureate in 1903 (she won it twice in physics and chemistry).

10. The Wright brothers

 In 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright invented the world's first successful airplane. They were legendary inventors and innovators because of their persistence, experimentation, and work on the principles of flight.

11. Galileo Galilei

Galileo is often referred to as the father of modern science because of his breakthrough ideas that helped usher in the scientific revolution in the 17th century. In the face of religious dogmatism, Galileo became an icon of scientific integrity after being forced to defend his heliocentric views against the Roman inquisition.

12. Richard Feynman

Richard's quantum theory breakthroughs revolutionized the field of physics in the 20th century.

13. Maria Telkes

Her invention is more relevant than ever today because we need to adopt it. The Hungarian scientist Maria Telkes created the first thermoelectric power generator in 1947, and she also used that technology to build the first fully solar-powered house in 1953 in Dover, Massachusetts.

14. Josephine Cochrane (1839 - 1913)

After servants chipped heirloom dishes, American inventor Josephine Cochrane invented a mechanical dishwasher. While it holds dishes securely on a rack, water sprays through to clean them. With a lot of debt after her husband died in 1883, making the dishwasher work - and profitable - became essential. In 1886, she got her patent and started selling her dishwasher to hotels. She told a reporter, "You can't imagine what it was like in those days... for a woman to cross a hotel lobby alone." "This was my first time without my husband or father, so the lobby seemed a mile long. I almost fainted — instead, I received an $800 order." The dishwasher became a household word at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. After her death, Cochrane's dishwasher company was bought by KitchenAid, and she's still listed as one of the company's founders.

15. Patricia Bath

She's the first African American female doctor to get a patent for medical purposes, and now people with cataracts can get their sight back. Laserphaco Probe is a device Bath invented in 1981 that uses a laser to dissolve cataracts in the eye, then cleans the eye so a replacement lens can be inserted. Worldwide, the device helps prevent blindness caused by cataracts, which affect around 25 million Americans.

16. Mary Anderson (1866 - 1953)

What would it be like to drive in bad weather without windshield wipers? That was the only option until Mary Anderson came up with them! When Anderson visited New York City in 1902, the trolley driver had to open the front window so he could see through falling sleet on the trolley car. Upon returning to Alabama, she got to work on a solution. It controlled a rubber blade on the windshield with a lever inside the car. Similar devices had been made before, but Anderson's worked better. Amazingly, car manufacturers initially didn't see the value in her invention; one Canadian company declined her invention in 1905, saying, "we don't see it as being of such commercial value that we would sell it." However, in 1922, Cadillac became the first car manufacturer to include a windshield wiper on all its vehicles, and after Anderson's patent expired, they became standard equipment soon after.

17. Melitta Bentz (1873 - 1950)

Melitta Bentz made brewing coffee easier, thanks to a German entrepreneur! Housewives like Bentz were frustrated by the difficulty of brewing coffee: percolators over-brewed, espresso machines left grounds in drinks, and linen bag filters were hard to clean. With a lot of experimentation, she came up with the idea of using blotting paper from her son's school exercise book, nestled inside a brass pot perforated with a nail; she patented it and started manufacturing them. Within a year, she sold hundreds of her filters, including 1,200 at the Leipzig Fair alone, and by 1928, she had dozens of employees. Over time, she kept improving her filter, making it more and more popular. Bentz was popular with her employees because of her generous bonuses and work schedule, and she also started "Melitta Aid," a social fund. Melitta Group makes coffee, coffee makers, and coffee filters today, so don't be surprised if that name sounds familiar.

18. Grace Hopper (1906 - 1992)

You can thank programming pioneer Grace Hopper every time you type on your computer! When all computer programs were written in numerical code, the mathematician and US Navy reserve officer started her career. It was Hopper's idea that programming would be better if people could code in their own language; she invented the first compiler in 1952, teaching computers to "talk." Her colleagues didn't realize she had succeeded for a long time: "Nobody believed that...They told me computers could only do arithmetic." Later, she co-invented COBOL, the first universal programming language. "I took particular pride in teaching during Hopper's long career with the Navy – during which she got the rank of Rear Admiral by special presidential appointment and was nicknamed "Amazing Grace" - during which she achieved the rank of Rear Admiral by special presidential appointment. "Training young people is my most important accomplishment, other than building the compiler," she said. I keep track of them as they grow and stir them up every now and then, so they don't forget to take chances."

19. Marion Donovan (1917 - 1998)

If you think dealing with a baby's diapers is messy now, imagine when waterproof covers weren't around. Marion Donovan discovered that cloth diapers, which at the time didn't have covers, were very leaky when she had kids: she spent hours washing and replacing bedsheets and clothes. To prevent leaks, she sewed a cover from a shower curtain so no chafing or diaper rash happened. She had four patents by 1949 for her "boater" diaper cover, including one that used plastic snaps instead of diaper pins, but the company she hired to make them for her couldn't sell them, so she hired Saks Fifth Avenue to sell them for her. The Keko Corporation bought her company and patents two years later for $1 million. She went on to invent and patent 20 other items, all geared toward simplifying everyday tasks: before she came up with an idea, she asked herself, "What will most certainly benefit a lot of people?"

20. Tim Berners-Lee

Sir Timothy Berners-Lee is widely regarded as the inventor of the Internet, the most significant development of the late 20th century. However, it's a bit more complicated than that. Originally, the Internet was designed to withstand a nuclear attack at the Pentagon. ARPANET was the name of that system, which was launched in 1969. In order to share resources more efficiently at CERN, where he worked, Sir Tim added the concept of hypertext. In 1989, with the help of his team, the web services and HTML was created and opened up to the public in 1991.

6 top soft skills for you and your team to achieve your goals

Innovation is essential for businesses to stay competitive and grow in today's fast-paced market. To be successful, leaders need to possess certain innovation skills that allow them to identify opportunities, think creatively, and implement new ideas. Here are the top seven innovation skills that every leader should have.

1. Creativity and Idea Generation : The ability to think creatively and generate new ideas is a crucial innovation skill for successful leaders. This involves breaking away from traditional thinking patterns and exploring new possibilities. Leaders who are skilled in creativity and idea generation can identify opportunities for growth and develop innovative solutions to problems. They also encourage their team members to think outside the box and contribute their own ideas to the organization..
2. Collaboration and Teamwork: Collaboration and teamwork are essential innovation skills for successful leaders. Innovation often requires a diverse set of skills and perspectives, and leaders who are able to bring together individuals with different backgrounds and expertise can create a more innovative and effective team. Effective collaboration also requires strong communication skills, the ability to listen and incorporate feedback, and a willingness to compromise and find common ground. Leaders who prioritize collaboration and teamwork can create a culture of innovation where everyone feels valued and empowered to contribute to the success of the organization.
3. Strategic Thinking and Planning : Strategic thinking and planning are other important innovation skills for successful leaders. This involves analyzing the current state of the business, identifying potential challenges and opportunities, and developing a plan to achieve long-term goals. Leaders who are skilled in strategic thinking and planning can anticipate changes in the market and adapt their business strategies accordingly. They also prioritize their resources and investments to achieve the greatest impact on the organization's success.
4. Critical Thinking and Learning Autonomy: Good habits are the main way to develop critical thinking and learning autonomy skills. Critical thinking is the ability to analyze information, evaluate arguments, and make informed decisions. It involves questioning assumptions, considering multiple perspectives, and using evidence to support your conclusions. Learning autonomy, on the other hand, is the ability to take control of your own learning process. It involves setting goals, seeking out resources, and taking responsibility for your own education. Both of these skills are essential for success in any field, and can be developed through practice and intentional effort.
5. Risk-Taking and Experimentation: Successful leaders understand that taking risks and experimenting with new ideas is essential for innovation. They are willing to try new approaches and take calculated risks to achieve their goals. This requires a willingness to fail and learn from mistakes, as well as the ability to pivot and adjust strategies when necessary. Leaders who are skilled in risk-taking and experimentation are able to create a culture of innovation within their organization, where employees feel empowered to share their ideas and take risks to drive growth and success.
6. Adaptability and Flexibility: In today's fast-paced and ever-changing business environment, adaptability and flexibility are crucial innovation skills for successful leaders. Leaders who are able to quickly adapt to new situations and pivot their strategies when necessary are better equipped to navigate challenges and seize opportunities. This requires a willingness to take risks, experiment with new ideas, and embrace change. Leaders who prioritize adaptability and flexibility can create a culture of innovation where employees feel empowered to take risks and explore new ideas.
   

In a world of automation, it’s soft skills that differentiate.

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