Often in meetings about new ideas, which happens fairly regularly in my professional life, someone will say something about how we shouldn’t reinvent the wheel. It’s a truism. Everybody nods sagely and on we go with our discussion, having at least that agreed between us.
And yet, I’m not sure it’s such a no-brainer. Is it impossible that the wheel could be improved? Haven’t there been multiple improvements since the original design? Imagine if people had told the man who invented pneumatic tyres not to bother reinventing the wheel.
I think creativity demands that people are free to think their own thoughts and make their own stuff unconstrained by fears that it has been done before. It is worth doing something your own way, even if it has been done before.
One of the frequent complaints of students at ITP was that there was no database of previous projects we could use to make sure we never repeated an idea. But I’ve always thought that such a database would have had a massive chilling effect on our sense of possibility, enthusiasm and willingness to just give things a try. I’m pretty sure wonderful Red Burns had similar misgivings. Knowing that every single idea you had had been done many times before would be dispiriting. But the fact that your idea isn’t brand new and completely unprecedented doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile or that you won’t be the one to finally get it right.
