look around

and you find the bits and pieces for the next revolution. As stated promptly on the right pane by mr. Gibson, future is already here.

In Guardian there was a jolly good story
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/oct/19/steven-johnson-good-ideas
about the same subject. How new ideas and inventions incubate when conditions are ready for them. They actually seem inevitable, it's just about the timing. Maybe the genius is in those who foresee that development.

Also an older citation by Henry Ford (from Hargadon's "How breakthroughs happen..")

'I invented nothing new. I simply assembled into a car the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work. ... Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed. So it is with every new thing. Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready, and then it is inevitable. To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense.'

Andrew Hargadon also introduces in his 2003 book a term called "technology brokering" which is essentially the same thing as in Guardian article. Shamelessly borrow ideas from other companies and industries and disciplines to unlock the potential of distant analogies.

Standing on the shoulders of giants.