Steal That Idea!
The Innovation-Killing Power of so-called Common Sense
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Some well-intended thoughts are exceptionally good at killing innovation.
You’ve no doubt heard—and perhaps used—the expression: Don’t reinvent the wheel.
Or another overused cliché: If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.
Both get dropped into conversations and ideation sessions to reject ideas perceived to be redundant or weak, and both are profoundly bad advice.
We had automobiles before Henry Ford and computers before Steve Jobs. Mobile phones before the iPhone, cabs before Uber, hotels before AirB&B, and electric cars before Tesla.
Reinventing wheels can be very lucrative!
Questions this article explores
Does innovation require completely original ideas?
Why is “don’t reinvent the wheel” bad advice for innovators?
How can existing products and business models inspire innovation?
Why should you fix something that isn’t broken?
Why do successful innovators build on existing ideas?
Fixing the Unbroken
Fixing things that aren’t broken is a pretty good summary of what innovators do.
This is so true that when startup founders seek investors, a common strategy is to describe their venture as the Uber of “X” or the AirB&B of “Y”. That’s shorthand for: We’re taking a proven business concept and building on it, improving on it, or applying it in a different context. Many of the most wildly successful ventures follow this pattern.
Google was a remake of Yahoo based on the relevancy of web pages.
Facebook was Friendster for college students.
YouTube was an updated version of Flicker (Or Vimeo, or Google Video).
Amazon began as the world’s biggest bookstore.
AirBnB is Hotels.com for non-hotel owners.
Zoom is a more user friendly and feature rich version of GoToMeeting (Or Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams)
Netflix adopted the monthly flat fee subscription model used by magazines, record clubs and health clubs and applied it to video rentals and later streaming.
The list goes on…
Inventing the Invented
There’s nothing wrong with finding inspiration in existing technologies, practices and business models, and applying them in some new way. This approach was systematized by the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving, commonly referred to by its Russian acronym TRIZ. It’s an innovation methodology explicitly based on the premise that every engineering or design problem has already been solved. Russian inventor Genrikh Altshuller observed skilled inventors, and studied the patent literature to identify recurring patterns and solutions across widely diverse applications. He catalogued them into 40 principles of invention.
Altshuller’s ideas and methodology reached the West after the end of the cold war. The Altshuller Institute for TRIZ Studies was established in 1998 to promote TRIZ outside Russian. It’s led by a friend of mine Richard Langevin.
One of my goals with Innovator Mindset Substack is helping you put these concepts into practice. That’s why I’ve created weekly exercises to develop the habits of an innovator.
For just $5 a month (less with an annual subscription) you’ll begin receiving these exercises. You’ll also be supporting this work and community.
Join us!
The Ultimate Innovator
Nature is the the world’s oldest innovator and another source of innovative solutions. One that’s spawned an entire subdiscipline of innovation known as biomimicry. Famous examples include burdock seeds inspiring Velcro fasteners, and sharkskin inspiring more efficient swimsuits that work so well they’ve been banned in competition.
My theory of innovation—that this Substack is based on—mimics the process of natural selection, as I explained in one of my first articles. That makes my work a form of biomimicry.
Unoriginality
Originality is commendable, but not always necessary. Skilled ideation facilitators and idea management platforms encourage folks to build or “piggyback” on each other’s ideas. Don’t let anyone tell you, you have a bad idea just because it’s like one they’ve heard before. That may be one of its strengths. Especially when those other ideas have proven successful.
Whenever you need a new idea or solution, a good place to start is looking around at what others are already doing. What can you borrow? Transfer? Improve? Repurpose? Reapply? Reinvent? Rediscover? The best innovators make a habit of it.
In this era of rapid change, we all need to be innovators. So, go fix something that isn’t broken. Reinvent some wheels!
Where have you seen a clever idea you can “borrow’? Where do you need an idea that might already be out there?
Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple, or more direct than does nature, because in her inventions nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Hi, I’m Dennis Stauffer. I’m an internationally recognized expert on the mindset of world class innovators. I’ve studied innovativeness in entrepreneurs in cooperation with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, and developed innovativeness in students under a grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation. I’m a neurodivergent Emmy Award-winning journalist, author, speaker, independent researcher, social entrepreneur, and innovation practitioner.
In other words, I’m still deciding what I want to be when I grow up.
My focus here is on developing the capabilities we all need, to respond to the dramatic changes coming at us, in the world and in our lives. Thanks for being here. Let’s go make the world better.
To learn more about my work, go to:
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