At the same place I found this, I found this:

An inventor is simply a fellow who doesn’t take his education too seriously.

Well, maybe such an attitude is necessary to make you an inventor, but I would hardly call it sufficient.

This makes more sense:

A problem well stated is a problem half solved.

As does this:

Keep on going and the chances are you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I have never heard of anyone stumbling on something sitting down.

And surely these latter two things, or things very like them, are just the kind of things that good educators are fond of saying to their pupils.

And oh look, it turns out that one of the things that Kettering did before becoming an industrial inventor, for General Motors among other enterprises, was be a teacher:

Charles F. Kettering was born on a farm in Ohio in 1876; his early vocation was as a teacher in Ohio’s one-room schools. He entered the College of Wooster in Ohio, but poor eyesight caused him to leave college and return to teaching. In 1898, he entered the engineering school at Ohio State University, graduating with an Electrical Engineering degree in 1904.

Presumably Ohio State were doing something right.  Kettering had a lifelong interest in education, but emphasised that:

“If we taught music the way we try to teach engineering, in an unbroken four-year course, we would end up with theory and no music. Practical experience is needed to correlate the so-called theory with practice.”

Much better.