Original Ideas Don't Exist

When we think about great inventions, we often picture a genius having a sudden flash of insight. But is that how innovation really works? Or are we just discovering things that were bound to happen anyway?

Look at any major breakthrough and you'll see it didn't come from nowhere. Every new idea builds on older ones. Thomas Edison didn't invent electricity from scratch - he figured out how to make it useful in everyday life. Steve Jobs didn't create the first computer - he made computers that people actually wanted to use. Their brilliance wasn't in making something completely new, but in connecting existing ideas in ways no one else had thought of.

This makes us wonder: maybe there's no such thing as a truly original idea. Maybe we're just uncovering things that were waiting to be found.

History gives us some good examples. Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz both invented calculus around the same time without knowing about each other's work. Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray both filed patents for the telephone on the exact same day. Hungarian scientist Janos Bolyai and Russian mathematician Nikolai Lobachevsky both came up with non-Euclidean geometry independently. When different people reach the same conclusions separately, it suggests these discoveries might have been inevitable once the right conditions were in place.

Innovation exists in the twilight between discovery and creation. We don't invent the future so much as recognize it just before it arrives.

But this idea that everything is predetermined doesn't match how creative work actually feels. Talk to any artist, inventor, or scientist about their process, and they'll tell you about struggle, difficult choices, and the feeling of exploring unknown territory. If innovation were just following an already-written script, wouldn't it feel more like following directions than blazing a trail?

Having worked with many innovators over the years, I've seen them face tough decisions and take surprising turns in their work. Their paths don't look predetermined at all.

We can resolve this contradiction by thinking about creativity on different scales. On the big scale, yes, certain developments probably would happen eventually given enough time. Someone was bound to combine phone technology with computing. Someone was going to map the human genome. The general direction of progress might follow predictable patterns.

But on the small scale - in the messy day-to-day work of creating - we have lots of genuine choices. The exact form, timing, and application of ideas remains unpredictable. While a smartphone-like device may have been inevitable, the specific design and features of the iPhone weren't. Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin required both the presence of mold and his trained mind to recognize its importance.

This gives us a more balanced view: we create within limits. Our innovations aren't completely original or completely predetermined. They emerge from a mix of existing knowledge, cultural context, and individual insight.

Maybe the most powerful creative act isn't inventing something from absolute zero (which is impossible anyway), but seeing potential connections before anyone else does. Innovation becomes less about being original and more about perspective - seeing familiar things from new angles.

This view frees us from the impossible goal of pure originality while still acknowledging our creative choices. It suggests that value comes not from being first or most original, but from being most aware of emerging possibilities.

In creativity, like in music, we improvise within existing structures. The basic notes might be set, but the song we create is our own.

This article first appeared in Studio Notes on Substack. If you want early access to future articles, subscribe to Studio Notes.