Without doubt, in the annals of human history, the invention of a new system of writing is definitively an example of radical innovation. There is an interesting story of how the Chinese writing system, consisting of square pictograms, were invented more than four thousand years ago. It was arguably the first historically-recorded example of bio-mimicry that resulted in an invention.
Like other cultures, ancient Chinese used strings and tied knots for recording dates and events. Later, they started to put scratches in wooden pieces or carved signs on tortoise shells. These efforts, over millenniums, did not resulted in a clear system of writing until the time of the first Chinese king, Huang-ti.
A court official, named “Changjie” was charged with the task of developing a system of words that can be used through the tribal kingdom that was ancient China. We can conjectured that he must have collected samples of writings that existed then and thought hard about coming up with a system. History recorded that Chngjie’s invention came to him when he was examining a tortoise shell that has been used for recording words. As he pondered, it occurred to him that there are natural patterns on the shell that can be grouped. Aha! So the new system is a series of stylized patterns!
This bit of insight led to the invention of the Chinese system of characters that are analogous in style to the patterns on top of a tortoise shell. In this case, indeed, the rest is history.
We can imagine that Changjie must have thought long and hard about what should have been the answer to his problem. Looking at the patterns on the shell gave him the inspiration. No, he did not copy the patterns. Instead, he copied the concept that a series of linked scribbles can represent a word. This was truly a conceptual analogical mapping example.
My telling of this story is to illustrate that analogical mapping is a most natural, human thinking process – even as ancient as a 4000 year old innovation. Even till today, Changjie’s accomplishment is recognized by naming the new system of computerized Chinese input method after him.