Innovation is combination
Engravings featuring the marching packs (sarcinas) of Roman soldiers on a triumphal column in Italy. Trajan’s column was completed in AD 113 to commemorate Roman emperor Trajan’s victory in the Dacian Wars.
When the Roman Empire was at its peak, it had 450,000 soldiers. The world’s most dominant imperial force for hundreds of years.
Most of the 450,000 soldiers carried their own food and supplies in a marching pack called a sarcina. For transporting heavier supplies, Romans also had sophisticated wheel-driven vehicles, including carriages, wagons, and chariots.
But for over 2,000 years, no one thought to put wheels on packs.
That didn’t happen until 1970 when an American named Bernard Sadow invented it.
Sadow holds United States patent No. 3,653,474.
“Rolling Luggage.”
Innovation is never a single event. It’s rarely a flash of genius.
It’s the combination of phenomena, facts, concepts, variables, constants, techniques, theories, laws, and questions.
It can be as simple as taking familiar things and combining them in new ways. Like putting wheels on luggage.
