I got to thinking last night, probably way too late for my own good, about novelty. You know, that crazy proverbial flag-on-the-moon, conquistador-inching-up-on-new-lands, disheveled-mad-scientist-in-a-secret-lab type of thing.

In a nutshell ― what makes for newness in discovery and innovation.

I had a couple questions: does originality truly exist in the way that I’ve been thinking of it, requiring an “untouched frontier” when it comes to creative innovation? Really, can anything be so groundbreaking, so novel, so out of our peripheral vision that its unveil would truly change the operation of our world? Are those inventors I just mentioned unique themselves or are they enhancing some blueprint left by another forefather?

Let’s take the case of Gunpei Yokoi. Riding the train to work, Yokoi watched a man fiddle with an LCD calculator for fun, when the idea dawned on him ― how could he fuse the wildly popular “arcade style” games of the 80s and 90s with the ease of portability and independent play? A few prototypes (and many failures, including the Virtual Boy) later, the GameBoy was born. 

So would we call Yokoi creative? Certainly. Original? In some ways. The raw materials he used to create the device ― plastic buttons, 3.5 mm headphone jack, external rechargeable battery, a rainbow of microchips — weren’t his inventions in the least. The ‘screws and nails’, so to speak, were mutually exclusive to the idea. If it weren’t for Yokoi selectively picking out those parts for that product, it wouldn’t exist.

And therein lies what I think is a new distinction: authentic originality. Just like you didn’t hatch the eggs or milk the cow, that delicious chocolate cake is all yours, even if you didn’t write the recipe.

To be honest, I was completely annoyed by the notion that all the good ideas were taken when it comes to newness. Everything’s been done before! Where can we leave our dent in the universe! And it dawned on me ― save digging in a quarry for some alien mineral, “reinventing the wheel” isn’t so bad. Actually, not bad at all if you consider the hundreds and hundreds of re-inventors like Steve Jobs or even Eli Whitney. Instead of tweaking (this word is way too close to Twinkies by the way, so I won’t use it often), authentic originality is a personally rendered enhancement rather than the ripping-off I had previously seen it as.

And therein lies the novelty only uniqueness can bring.

“Wherever you may find the inventor, you may give him wealth or you may take from him all that he has; and he will go on inventing. He can no more help inventing that he can help thinking or breathing.” 

― Alexander Graham Bell