Reinventing the Wheel

Are we reinventing it or modifying it making improvements? Sometimes improvements need to be made on the original to suit a application. Stone wheels on a car today just won't make it.

I have been accused of reinventing many times and that was because I didn't know the basics.

Or didn't realise the idea/design/product/etc already existed perhaps? This has happened to me (and pretty-much everyone else involved in idea and product development) numerous times. Oh internet search you are our friend and companion (but sometimes you can make it difficult to get the right answers from).

Certainly it is a valid statement to make when time is of the essence and time spent reinventing is a waste of money.

Again the personal learning (and fun) is in the journey. From a business point of view a certain level of reinvention is necessary to ensure continued market success (such as reinventing an existing product to make it cheaper to manufacturer or better for market).

Whether you reach the end (product or idea meets fruition) the journey is never, ever a total waste. As many will tell you you can learn more from a failure than from a success.

I too try to reinvent the wheel on a regular basis. It is an exercise filled with learning, as you point out. It is also true that employers don't like to pay for that design time.

so it is time to reinvent employers!!

Too often it's a term used to discourage people from going back to basics and really understanding what needs to be done.

There are others - "We've always done it that way" always make me suspicious (is that the best reason you've got?).

Reinventing anything is not only an important education process but an important traning process for future inventors. This was one of the proccesses I went through to learn how to invent.

If the wheel had not been continuously reinvented then the ox cart would still be our only means of transportation.

Do you have to be a rocket scientist to reinvent the wheel?

"The Apollo and Gemini programs aren't truly lost. There are still one or two Saturn V rockets lying around, and there are plenty of parts from the spacecraft capsules still available. But just because modern scientists have the parts doesn't mean they have the knowledge to understand how or why they worked the way they did. In fact, very few schematics or records from the original programs are still around. This lack of record keeping is a byproduct of the frenetic pace at which the American space program progressed. Because NASA was in a space race with the USSR, the planning, design, and building process of the Apollo and Gemini programs was always rushed. Not only that, but in most cases private contractors were brought in to work on every individual part of the spacecraft. Once the programs ended, these engineers–along with all their records–moved on. None of this would be a problem, but now that NASA is planning a return trip to the moon, a lot of the information about how the engineers of the 1960s made the voyages work is invaluable. Amazingly, the records remain so disorganized and incomplete that NASA has resorted to reverse engineering existing spacecraft parts that they have lying around in junkyards as a way of understanding just how the Gemini and Apollo programs managed to work so well. ..."

complete article

I have been accused of reinventing the wheel several times. It is a put down.

I made a "fermentation fueled pump" recently. (Using the gas and pressure from fermentation to pump water) and people searched around frantically until they found Hero's fountain.

So they found something vaguely similar, they are calm again, the search is over.

It is categorized

They are happy because I "reinvented" Hero's fountain. HA HA

But it isn't hero's fountain. (Perhaps I reinvented something else).

Therefore, I think "reinventing the wheel" is also an excuse for intellectual laziness.

Brian

Hello Ronseto,

Please, don't forget the "what's"! What and how are the mosy important part of any reinvention, which is turning again cash into ideas.

Definition of reinventing the wheel: somebody already innovated something, made, marketed, and made profits, and someone else redo but now, just made and try to market, and most of the time there is no business again. Reinventions are risky businesses, Gil.