Wheel reinvention is over-rated

I love Tom Peter's quote - "forget reinventing the wheel, concentrate on your home grown wheel makers" from The Little BIG Things.

For some time now I have been questioning the so-called logic "don't reinvent the wheel". It just seems to be an excuse to limit creativity and innovation. Just keep tweaking the same-old and you'll just get more of the same-old.

Of course there are pragmatic/economic/time-saving reasons to tweak what we already have, but is that at the expense of creativity and innovation - I think so.

The wheel has been invented, it revolutionised the world in so many ways - personally, interpersonally, commercially. It has been invented and cannot be reinvented. So there ends the argument.

New ideas and new ways of doing things are fresh and exciting and bring new energy. Wheel makers will make the right wheel for the vehicle, terrain and purpose.

You can't put a bike wheel on a lorry. You can't even put a racing bike on a mountain bike. So before you come out with the line... "we don't want to reinvent the wheel"... think again. Perhaps you need a new wheel altogether for this new turn in the road.

#111 The Innovation 15: What we know so far... (163 ways to pursue excellence - Peters)

Innovation and leadership legend, Tom Peters has summarised his four decades of work on the subject of innovation to the top 15:
1. Try it, Repeat, Repeat - He who tries the most stuff wins.
2. Celebrate failure - not tolerate, but celebrate.
3. Relentlessly decentralise - more statistically independent tries
4. Parallel universe - when facing resistance to change, set up a separate "new world"
5. Searchers - forget reinventing the wheel, concentrate on your home grown wheel makers
6. Hang out axiom - hang out with 'interesting', get more 'interesting'...hang out with 'ordinary', get more 'ordinary'
7. "d"iversity - lowercase 'd' diversity means diversity on any dimension imaginable
8. Co-invent with outsiders - creating new inputs and a great test bed - the power of "everybody"
9. "Strategic" listening - core competence - harvest ideas from any and every source imaginable
10. Hire and promote innovators - the best test is a track record of innovation
11. XFX/Cross functional excellence - 90%of innovation requires or can immeasurably benefit from working across functional borders
12. Complexity and systems destruction officer - systems are imperative. Systems constrain and strangle
13. R&D Equality - may be the "value added Secret #1"
14. Fun! Self deprecation! - Innovation is about breaking the rules - often our rules.
15. Good luck! - Entropy rules! Performance deteriorates.

from "The little BIG things:163 ways to pursue excellence" by Tom Peters (2010)