If you have ever attended an innovation conference, you will be familiar with consultants’ graphs that show how, say, the second half of the 21st century will belong to African millennials relentlessly networking via wearable mobile devices. But what has struck me recently is not so much the extraordinary potential of the future, but the extent to which innovators draw on ingredients from the present and the past.

Novelty is virtually the only common element in many definitions of innovation. But any corporate leader who assumes these products or processes must be conjured from scratch will condemn his innovation department to futile hours in the lab.

Gambling that a rare flash of genius will generate a brand new, commercially viable idea is expensive and time-consuming.