INDUSTRIAL DESIGNERS: stop chasing originality

Every product advance combines old concepts in new configurations. The iPhone didn't invent touchscreens, phones, or mobile internet. It just combined existing parts into something that finally made sense.

Even genuinely original innovations need anchoring to something familiar or they never get adopted. Users need reference points to understand what they're looking at. A completely novel interaction with no precedent isn't breakthrough design, it's a product nobody knows how to use.

The skill isn't always having new ideas, it's recognizing when solutions can be borrowed from other domains. Dyson saw industrial dust collection and asked "what if that geometry worked at household scale?" That question beat decades of brainstorming "revolutionary vacuum concepts."

Originality isn’t just making something new. It’s making something make sense in a new way.

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