About Menlo
Menlo was founded by four partners: Richard Sheridan, Thomas Meloche, James Goebel, and Robert Simms in 2001.
Located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Menlo is dedicated to creating
an environment of creativity and service for our customers, employees,
community, friends and families.
Why the name Menlo? It is really
quite simple - Menlo is a tribute to Thomas Edison and his
positive impact on the lives of almost every single person on this
planet. We believe the world still has much to learn from Thomas
Edison and his approach to innovation.
Edison's Invention Factory
It had been a general belief in Edison's time that
the act of invention was pure happenstance or isolated genius; one
could not simply plan to invent something. Edison considered
this nonsense and he demonstrated that by bringing the right people
together in the right environment, world changing inventions could
be produced in a regular manner.
Thomas Edison's Invention Factory Menlo
Park, NJ 1880
Courtesy of Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, Michigan
In 1876 Edison created a unique and innovative
environment in Menlo Park, New Jersey. Today we call this
revolutionary environment a research laboratory; Edison called it the
Invention Factory. He came to employ at the Invention
Factory upwards of 200 people with a wide variety of specialized
skills. They worked together in an open and collaborative
environment. Their work, always driven with the purpose of
building valuable marketable products, produced world changing new
inventions at an unprecedented rate. Working in an iterative and
incremental manner, Edison set a goal to produce a minor invention
every ten days and a major one every six months.
The Menlo Software Factory
At The Menlo Software Factory we employ the same
techniques Edison successfully pioneered nearly 130 years ago.
We work in and open and collaborative environment developing software
in an iterative and incremental manner; seeking to have a minor
release every ten days and a major application every six months. Of
course, just like Edison, the driving factor behind everything we do
is creating useful and marketable software that provides real business
value. Just ask our customers.
The Menlo Software Factory Ann Arbor, MI
Our teams consist of specialists that work closely
together, not isolated by offices or cubes. In this manner they
produce software better, faster, and cheaper than any other process we
have ever witnessed, all in the spirit of Edison's original Invention
Factory.
Remarkably, Thomas Edison's practices are great
practices today to create high-quality, innovative software.
Like Edison's Invention Factory, our Menlo
Software Factory is ready to work for you to help you deliver
revolutionary software solutions for your business and to your
customers. Innovation, one release at a time.
The Menlo Institute
The Menlo Institute exists
to teach the principles learned from Thomas Edison and in The Menlo
Software Factory. We seek to improve the software development
community through formal training
classes, free resources and process mentoring services.
These offerings are designed to speak to visionaries, executives,
managers and developers.
Contact us today to learn
how you can apply the lessons of Thomas Edison's Invention
Factory to your internal software development teams.
