🚪 The Adjacent Possible

Why do breakthrough ideas often appear simultaneously in different places? Why couldn't Leonardo da Vinci build his helicopter? Innovation isn't random. It follows a hidden sequence.

Theoretical biologist Stuart Kauffman coined the term 'adjacent possible' to describe how evolution works: at any moment, only certain next steps are available. The same applies to ideas. YouTube couldn't exist before broadband. The iPhone couldn't exist before touchscreens and mobile processors. Innovation isn't about giant leaps into the unknown — it's about exploring the room next door. The adjacent possible is the shadow future hovering at the edges of the present, a map of all the ways the present can reinvent itself.

Stop chasing revolutionary ideas. Instead, ask: what's newly possible given what now exists? What combination of existing elements hasn't been tried? The best innovations feel obvious in hindsight because they were adjacent — waiting for someone to open the door. Your job is to stand at the edge of what exists and peer into what's just becoming possible.

This explains why simultaneous invention is so common. Calculus by Newton and Leibniz. The telephone by Bell and Gray. Evolution by Darwin and Wallace. When the adjacent possible opens, multiple people can see the same door. The lesson: if an idea feels timely, it probably is. And if you don't pursue it, someone else will.