What is creativity? Both Elon Musk and Benjamin Franklin can give us clues.

In 2002, Musk was on a mission to start a company—SpaceX—that would develop the technology needed to get people to Mars. Musk ran into a problem, though: Rocket manufacturers were quoting him rocket prices up to $65 million a pop. This was far too expensive for his budget. To solve this problem, Musk researched what a rocket was made of and how much those raw materials cost. He learned that the raw materials of a rocket comprised only 2% of its total cost. This discovery, along with Musk’s realization that he could cut launch costs greatly by making reusable rockets, made SpaceX possible and profitable.

Nearly three hundred years earlier, in 1747, Benjamin Franklin was working on. . .