Many innovations are, in fact, the re-incarnation of ideas that have gone before. Take the light bulb - the very epitomy of innovation. The screw thread fitting was invented around the turn of the last century by one of Edison’s technicians when looking for a mechanism to securely fix a light bulb into it's socket. The fitting is based on the threaded cap from a paraffin can that just happened to be in Edison's laboratory.The fitting was standardised in 1909 and screw in bulbs in the UK use a standard E27 fitting - the "27" refers to the diameter of the thread in millimeters, the “E” standards for Edison. It is the one shown in the image by the way, just in case you thought the picture was purely for decoration!
Many of these innovations are purely serendipitous and depend largely on the innovator's past experiences. For example, Edison's technicians had been experimenting with charcoal for a completely different purpose before they struck on the idea of using it as a filament in the incandescent light bulb. It is these prior experiences that help innovators make connections that no one else has made before. The wider your set of previous experiences, the more "connectedness" you are likely to stumble across.
I am not the first to comment on this (see Andrew Hargadon's excellent book on technology brokering, "How breakthroughs happen" - more later) and many organisations are using this during their initial idea generating process. It makes sense to make sure that we have looked for inspiration in other industries and sectors, particularly we they are encountering similar problems, as well as looking at how past problems have been solved.
Let's look at another example. Again this is from Thomas A. Edison. In 1912, Edison launched the first home movie projection system called the Kinetoscope. Unfortunately for Edison, the home cinema projector pre-dated the home cinema camera so users were stuck with watching prerecorded 16 minute movies. These were fairly expensive due to the low volumes and even with the most interesting subject matter, you probably wouldn't want to watch it too many times. To combat this, Edison introduced a central clearing house for movies which can be exchanged by post. Ultimately, the idea failed because of a lack of take up, but the idea remains.
In 2004, LOVEFiLM launched its DVDs by post business in the UK. Today, there are over 900,000 members, 65,000 titles and 3M rentals per month in 5 countries.
I know there are lots of other examples out there. I am sure that you will have your own favourites. But the point here is that if you are looking for inspiration a great starting point can be looking to the past to understand how similar problems have been previously solved.
