The first examples of technology brokering can be found as early as 1876 with Thomas Edison in his Menlo Park laboratory. In six years, this lab procured over 400 patents.[1]:2 Menlo Park laboratory was such a successful ‘invention factory’ because Thomas Edison had a firm belief in recombinant innovation. There were no inventions from Menlo Park that were truly invented from nothing – each one had some basis that was pulled from another field of technology.