Innovations and Discoveries that were Achieved Through Serendipity, Error, or Exaptation

March 01, 2023

Innovations and Discoveries that were Achieved Through Serendipity, Error, or Exaptation

Definitions:

Errors: These are the innovations that come up when you are trying to innovate something, and it turns out to be another thing. In week four, we had an assignment on this as accident innovations.

Exaptation: This means physiological innovations to me. It takes us to study the diverse usage of available biological functions and mechanisms of living beings. It deals with having some organs and cells of the organism that were meant to be used for a particular thing turn out to be other important features for adaptation. Parry (2013) discusses that “an exaptation is co-opted from another or no apparent use, an adaptation is constructed by natural selection for its current use.”

Serendipity: This is when you are working on something, and it leads you to discover another thing that might totally not be in line with your project. This looks similar to innovations through errors, but it is pretty different.

Examples and Explanation:

Errors: We can perceive “Innovations through an error,” like when someone is trying to cook rice, the person leaves it longer than they should, and the rice turns into something like mashed potatoes. Instead of eating the rice as grains, they ate it mashed and with soup. It is still the same material that was meant for grained rice that turns into mashed rice. An example of this is “Super Glue.” In 1942, one of the inventors of Eastman Kodak Company, Harry Wesley Coover, innovated Super glue (Greenwald, 2018). This was accidentally created when Harry was trying to support World War II by making a transparent plastic gun sight. The Alcohol-Catalyzed Cyanoacrylate Adhesive compositions he came up with were too sticky for the purpose, and the project was abandoned (O'Brien, 2021). Later, after several years, in 1951, Harry’s colleague, Fred Joyner, joined hands with him to repurpose the composition and came up with super glue. It was sold to the public in 1958 and got inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2004 (TCDS, 2010).

O'Brien, C. (2021). How World War II led to the invention of super glue.

Exaptation: Parry (2013) gave an instant of sutures in all vertebrates that are in between the skull bones and was meant to aid growth. It is now additionally helpful in compressing the skulls of young mammals about to be given birth, to make delivery easier.

Serendipity: An example of this is the United States flag which Robert G. Heft, a 17-year-old student, designed in 1958. This was initially meant for a school project but was repurposed into the United States flag when President Eisenhower made it official. This is different from an error as it is not an error. It was meant for a purpose, and it later got itself as being famous on higher ground (Greenwald, 2018).