The problem isn't finding ideas, but finding ideas that other people haven't already thought and wrote about, or patented. Indeed, the crawl to the precipice of

The problem isn't finding ideas, but finding ideas that other people haven't already thought and wrote about, or patented. Indeed, the crawl to the precipice of knowledge in a domain can take years. There are only so many shortcuts, no matter how much pruning of the tree of knowledge you do, the path will only get longer. In fact, a great deal of effort goes into re-inventing the discoveries of others, hidden from them by language, disciplinary perspective.