Inventing involves giving your unconscious mind a “Search Target” that specifies the characteristics of what you’re trying to invent, prioritizing it and giving it the time required to sort through the billions of alternatives in its “database.”
Every invention involves seeing existing things in a new context, something like “This (the invention) is like that (something existing) but different in this way (something else existing).”
One of the most prolific inventors I knew, Jack Rabinow, put it this way, “I invent by looking at the world upside down. I see what others don’t and when I describe my invention, they say, ‘Why didn’t I see that?’ The answer is they didn’t now how to look.”