Coined by Scientist Stuart Kauffman and popularized by Steven Johnson the term ‘the adjacent possible’ captures the limits and potential of an innovation.
In simple term a successful innovation happens when it leverages the strengths of fields/domains around the core invention. For example, PayPal was first introduced as a payment method for transferring money between palm devices, but its founders saw the potential of using it for an adjacent domain of online payments using web.
YouTube would have not been so successful if it was introduced 1o years ahead of its launch since the adjacent possible domain i.e. the internet speed was not available to support the video transmission.
We understand something better by taking a problem and looking for its solution in different contexts.
Thinking Space 
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