The Runaway Species summary

Sometimes new ideas and inventions seem to come from nowhere. The more daring and groundbreaking an innovation, the more likely we are to think of it as a bolt from the blue. Sure, it’s a wonderful step forward, but ultimately we see it as the improbable result of chance and genius.

This attitude is understandable. After all, advances in technology and the arts often stagger us with their novelty.

But if we really want to understand creativity, we need to take a more critical look at innovation. In short, we need to look at the debt that novel ideas always owe to older ones.

The key message here is: Even revolutionary creators depend on inherited ideas.

When Steve Jobs presented the iPhone to the world in January 2007, many called it the “Jesus phone.” It’s no wonder they were so enthusiastic. The iPhone revolutionized the world of consumer technology. It compressed a music player, a communication tool, and a personal computer into one sleek and stylish device you could slip into your pocket.

As with all great inventions, the iPhone seemed unprecedented. Nothing quite like it had ever existed before – or so consumers thought.

The thing is, although the iPhone was revolutionary, it owed a lot to other, less successful predecessors. Take the Simon, the world’s first smartphone, which IBM launched in 1994. It boasted a stylus and a host of basic applications. So why don’t we remember it today?

Well, for one, the battery life was far too short, lasting about an hour. And making calls from a mobile phone was punishingly expensive in the mid-1990s. And the dawn of today’s world of inventive and enjoyable apps was still years off.

So when the iPhone burst on the scene in 2007, it wasn’t an unheralded arrival. In years gone by, other innovative but unsuccessful devices had laid the groundwork.

This principle of creative reinvention operates in the world of art, too. Take the writings of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the famous English Romantic poet. After Coleridge died, a scholar was studying the poet’s library. It turned out that many of Coleridge’s most striking images and phrases had their roots in the books lining his walls.

Just as Steve Jobs and his employees drew inspiration from older devices, Coleridge reworked and reinvented the raw material he found on his bookshelves. It showed once more that even the most creative acts depend on a long line of inventive predecessors.