Innovation, then, means finding new ways to apply energy to create improbable things, and see them catch on. It means much more than invention, because the word implies developing an invention to the point where it catches on because it is sufficiently practical, affordable, reliable and ubiquitous to be worth using.

Yet in spite of the visibility of the counterevidence, and the wisdom you can pick up free of charge from the ancients (or grandmothers), moderns try today to create inventions from situations of comfort, safety, and predictability instead of accepting the notion that “necessity really is the mother of invention.”

“Technology finds most of its uses after it has been invented, rather than being invented to meet a foreseen need.” – Jared Diamond

To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment.

man-made technologies evolve from previous man-made technologies, and are not invented from scratch. This is a key characteristic of evolutionary systems: the move to the ‘adjacent possible’ step.