Has everything been invented?

“It is obvious that if we could find characters or signs suited for expressing all our thoughts as clearly and as exactly as arithmetic expresses numbers or geometry expresses lines, we could do in all matters insofar as they are subject to reasoning all that we can do in arithmetic and geometry. For all investigations which depend on reasoning would be carried out by transposing these characters and by a species of calculus” Gottfried Leibniz

In the 17th century, one of the most prolific philosopher, mathematician and scientist, Gottfried Leibniz, proposed that all complex ideas in the world are a compound of smaller, limited and simpler ideas. On that token, Leibniz proposed that these simpler ideas, foundation of the most complex ones, formed what he coined as the alphabet of human thought. For Leibniz, all the complex ideas that come from simpler ones should also follow the rules of basic logic connections, such as those connections found in arithmetic and algebra.

Leibniz believed that by breaking down complex ideas into their fundamental components it was possible to recombine the pieces to create other, more complex ideas. While Leibniz wasn’t ever able to create such an alphabet of human thought, his idea of how the creative and innovation processes work was not too far away from the way we now understand these things to function.

As in any regular letter alphabet, or even a word alphabet, ideas can be recombined in an infinite number of ways. If words can be recombined infinitely to form an ever increasing number of expressions, it means that all the expressions that have been said throughout our history are by far less than all those that haven’t been said. Think about it this way: scientists have agreed that after centuries of classifying species, humans have only been able to fully describe 15% of the total. It means that we still have, at least, 85% of new species to discover, classify, and name.

A similar principle applies to ideas. All the ideas, creations, discoveries and inventions that have existed, all the knowledge that has been made available in the history of humankind is finite and limited. Therefore, the question is not whether all the basic ideas have been already created (because they haven’t), rather, the question is how to break down what already exists into its most basic components and recombine seemingly unrelated ideas to form new creations, or how to discover new basic ideas. VIPP, a German company that builds very high home products, comes to mind. Their first idea came when they looked at a commercial from the early 20th century and they decided to combine the vintage style of some home products with modern functionality, and they did so in a very novel way.

One of the challenges of creativity is the necessity to unleash people’s curiosity in order to find out the smaller ideas that can be part of the alphabet of ideas. When people observe and ask questions, there’s a self-potential realized that is inclined to find out more about the unknown, but is also compelled to also understand the known and analyze its basic components. Think about reading a book or a paper, and highlighting what you consider important. It is a process of finding the basics of that paper that appeal to you, and that you can use in the future as a reference for another idea. Innovation is not necessarily creating something totally new, but it is being able to see the old and put together the essentials and their basic properties in a different or novel way, or scale it to a different size, or brand it in a different way, to form something that adds more value, or solves another set of problems, or explores a bigger opportunity. In chemistry, how many substances you can form using basic elements? An example of the process of putting together basics to form something greater comes to my mind when I think about the creation of Post-It notes.

Dr. Spencer Silver, working for 3M Corporation, spent months trying to develop a strong adhesive. In the process, he was curious enough to find another application for its findings. He created a reusable stack of adhesive papers. Dr. Silver presented the idea in various conferences and seminars, but he failed to sell it as something that added value. One of the participants in one of the conferences, Art Fry, just out of sheer luck, used the “post-it” as a bookmark. He  saw that the potential of a previous idea, if scaled  and applied in a different context, would in fact add value to the product and allow it to serve the needs of another kind of customer. Mr. Fry didn’t create something new, but he definitely recombined the fundamentals of Dr. Silver’s invention for a different application.

The answer to the question of whether everything has been invented is a strong no. Not only everything hasn’t been invented yet, but, actually, all that has ever been invented is very likely a small portion of all what has yet to be created. Can you imagine the types of companies, technologies, products, services, workforce, talents, etc. that we will need in the next 10, 20 or 50 years to answer the evolving demands of a rapidly changing society?

I myself am in the quest for a creation that matches my passions and the things I’m good at. I’m in the quest for my Element, as Sir Ken Robinson explained in his book The Element. I’m working on it, and I am not only certain that there’s always something that needs to be invented or discovered, but I remain faithful and convinced that humans can and should always be engaged and bring our full potential in the quest for something great.

What’s on your mind now? What are you inventing? How are you looking at what has already been done and thinking how to create something new beginning with the basic ideas of what already exists?

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 About the Author: I'm an HR Professional with background in Electronic Engineer and a Fulbright scholar with an Executive Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Syracuse University. I'm passionate about leadership, HR and neuroscience. I'm also a competitive ultrarunner.

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