Exaptation: A Valuable Innovation Concept For Solopreneurs

Sometime around the year 1440, a young Rhineland, Germany solopreneur began tinkering with the design of the wine press. Rhinelanders had recently begun using wine presses, and the wine industry was on the verge of huge growth.

Our solopreneur was fresh from a disastrous business venture: manufacturing small mirrors with supposedly magical healing powers, which he intended to sell to religious pilgrims. But then the bubonic plague happened, and it put a huge dent in the size of the pilgrim market.[1]

However, the failure of the trinket business was a blessing for our hero, because it sent him down a more ambitious path. He had immersed himself in the technology of Rhineland vintners but Johannes Gutenberg wasn’t interested in wine. He was interested in words.

Gutenberg’s invention, the printing press, was one of the most important inventions in the history of humankind. The printing press made it possible for the common person to have access to books, which meant they would have unprecedented ability to accumulate knowledge.

Gutenberg’s press is a classic example of “combinatorial innovation,” combining existing technologies to create a new product. Moveable type, ink, paper, and the press itself had been developed long before Gutenberg printed his first Bible. For example, moveable type was conceived by a Chinese blacksmith four centuries earlier.

But the Chinese neglected to adapt the technology to mass production of texts. They imprinted the letterforms on the page by rubbing, which made the process only slightly more efficient than writing by hand.

Gutenberg, however, used his training as a goldsmith and gem cutter to make modifications to the movable-type system.[2]

Evolutionary biologists call this kind of borrowing exaptation.[3] An organism develops a trait for a specific use, but then the trait is hijacked for a completely different function.

So, how can you combine your skills, imagination, and exaptation to change the world?

Sources

1. “Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation,” Steven Johnson, 2010
2. “Inventor of the Week, Johann Gutenberg,” Lemelson-MIT, 2004
3. “Exaptation: a missing term in the science of form,” Paleobiology 8: 4-15, Stephen Jay Gould and Elisabeth Vrba, 1971