first is not always best

Smart and successful inventors not only learn from their own repeated mistakes, but from those who went before them.

Robert Fulton was not the first to operate a steamboat service. John Fitch operated one on the Delaware River a decade earlier, but Fulton learned from Fitch’s error in steaming on a river where stage coaches could compete on good roads.

Charles Goodyear learned from the failures of Nathaniel Hayward in his attempts to vulcanize rubber with heat and sulfur, though it took a lifetime in and out of Debtor’s prisons to make the formula work.

In fact, more innovations come from borrowing and combining than simple invention alone. So it’s OK to take the idea of digital photography and marry it with a cell phone. This is what we inventors call COTS and GOTS.