A Business Lesson from Edgar Allan Poe

by Kyle David on July 12th at 8:47 am EST

18^th Century poem and short story practitioner, Edgar Allen Poe, has withstood the test of time as one of the world’s most celebrated authors. Poe’s stories can elicit nearly every emotion in the human collection, forming the foundation for modern day horror, humor, and hoaxes.  This man of such creative brilliance has undoubtedly become a staple of literary study with his works weaving into the fabric of our lives.  Though the writing of Poe has been studied and examined far more than even Poe himself would have approved of, few people realize his creative brilliance translated into business sense as well.

Poe was to the 18^th Century what Steve Jobs was to the 20^th-- an entrepreneur in a field that no one thought was sustainable.  Writing in the 1800’s wasn’t like it is today.  There was no Oprah to push your book, no Borders to sell it, and no Times to review it.  If you wrote it, it better be damn good for people like Poe who were trying to make a living at it.  Through intention or survival, Poe learned a great rule of business quickly: get to the point quickly.

It’s nauseating how many business plans manage to surpass 200 or even 300 pages and never form a single point.  Worse yet, how many meetings have a primary goal of coffee and pastry consumption.  It is the successes of companies like General Electric under Jack Welsch or just about any company run by Donald Trump, that really highlight the get to the point philosophy.

Short stories were easier to read.  In fact Poe insisted that each of his works must be able to be read in a single sitting.  For if a story could begin and end before the mind wandered or the eyes got tired, it would be more attractive to read.  As an obvious result, more people read his work, and more people talked about it.  There were no confusing storylines, no unnecessary detail, just the story.  In writing particularly short stories, Poe fell upon business rule number two: diversify your assets.

During the Romanticism period in literature, the revolt against the aristocratic ways of British influence were an integral part in the movement toward short, simple, and quick instead of long and extravagant.  By writing lots of short stories instead of only a few long ones, Poe could easily recognize a dud before slaving over it and enjoy the glory of the successes without risking too much.  This literary form of risk management proved well for a guy who had to sustain himself on his thoughts along, an unspeakable thing in his time.  It was unmistakably incredible literary talent that brought him to business rule number three: plan, plan, plan.

In the study of “The Raven,” one of Poe’s most famous works, it is often broken down into each sentence individually.  Poe was a master planner and his language was incredibly efficient, and precisely presented in trochaic octameter, a consistent series of stressed and unstressed syllables.  Each and every word fit into “The Raven” like pieces of a perfectly cut puzzle and this short story read more like a long novel.

Now, the purpose here is not to illustrate what a wonderful writer Edgar Allen Poe was, but to show how three critical business elements converged to create a literary entrepreneur when such things didn’t exist.  Imagine if we held the auto industry CEOs to the same level of planning.  What if we held the Federal Reserve, to the same expectation of arriving at their point quickly?  Or, even the government to Poe’s incredible efficiency?

When confronting today’s business decisions, it is of critical importance that we recognize these three things that Poe recognized so early in our Nation’s history.  With any business decision of gravity, just think, “what would Poe do?”