The Reese's principle

In 1440, a goldsmith in Strasbourg was going broke.

He'd been chasing one idea for years: a machine that could copy books faster than a monk's hand. Monks managed about one page a day. A single Bible took three years and cost more than a farmhouse.

He had metal type. He had ink. What he couldn't figure out was pressure: how to stamp a full page evenly, thousands of times, without smearing.

Then he went to a wine harvest.

He watched a screw press crush grapes with slow, even force, and something clicked. Take the wine press. Add the coin punch he knew from goldsmithing. Swap water-based ink for oil-based.

That goldsmith? Johannes Gutenberg. Within 50 years there were more than 9 million printed books in Europe.

The Reese's principle

Peanut butter existed. Chocolate existed. The genius was putting them in the same cup.

Gutenberg invented almost nothing. He combined three existing technologies nobody had thought to unite, and rewired civilisation.

James Dyson did the same thing. He saw a 30-foot industrial cyclone separating paint particles at a timber mill, shrank it, and stuck it in a vacuum cleaner. 5,127 prototypes later: the bagless vacuum.

"Creativity is just connecting things." — Steve Jobs

So when you're stuck, stop digging deeper in your own field. Ask: who solved this shape of problem somewhere else? A wine press sat in plain sight for a thousand years, waiting for a goldsmith to walk past.

Steal from a distance. The further the field, the fresher the idea.

— Dan

P.S. What two things would you smash together?