Steven Johnson is profiled in this article about where good ideas come from– very interesting. (See shorter video version)
As I read this paragraph, I thought, “Hey, I know exactly what you’re talking about!”
“If this seems completely obvious, consider, Johnson says, how it explains the otherwise spooky phenomenon of the “multiple” – the way certain inventions or discoveries occur in several places simultaneously, apparently by chance. Sun-spots were discovered in 1611 by four different scientists in four different countries; electrical batteries were invented twice, separately, one year apart. (Similar things happened in the earliest days of the steam engine and telephone.) People have tried to explain this using vague terms such as the “zeitgeist”, or of certain ideas just being “in the air”. But there’s a simpler possibility, which is that the innovation in question had simply become part of the adjacent possible.”
I immediately flashed back to Buchner Pool in Waukesha, WI, and was staring down at my seven year old hand holding a soft pretzel from the concession stand (much needed nourishment for all of the intense swimming I was doing), when I thought, “Man, these pretzels would be so much better if they were filled with cheese.” Elated at the prospect of this invention, I began telling everyone…to which many responded, “Molly, those already exist.”
How could these fools not realize the original thought that had gone into unlocking that amazing idea– this cheese filling development was surely going to revolutionize the soft pretzel industry.
My dreams came crashing down when I was on a grocery shopping trip to Sam’s Club the next week– where cheese-filled soft pretzels were available to buy in BULK!
I learned at a young age that often times brilliant ideas are conceived at the exact same time by multiple people…and that SuperPretzel just managed to get the idea to market much quicker than I did.
Better luck next time. 
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