If you really want to be inventive, you can’t beat nature. The world of nature gives us
an endless supply of prototypes to use in our own world. Take Velcro, for example.
Velcro was patented by Georges de Mestral in 1950 after he returned from a hunting
trip covered in tiny burrs that had attached themselves to his clothing by tiny
overlapping hooks. De Mestral quickly realized that here was an ideal technique to
fasten material together. A whole new way of doing things was suddenly invented.
The history of the world is the history of innovation. Thomas Kuhn called each
acceptance of a new innovation a “paradigm shift”. For once a new innovation becomes
accepted, the world has changed for ever and can never go back to the way it was.