AI used as a means to generate ideas reflects how ideation is driven not just by "new ideas", or "conceptual innovation", but by "new technology" which, moreover, often has preconditions to be fulfilled for innovation to happen. For example, social media platforms would not have happened without the invention of the Internet. However, such preconditioned-driven innovation has a long history. Galileo, the Renaissance astronomer (1564-1642), for instance, used his skills as a great lens-maker to build a high-powered telescope which in turned proved his theory of a heliocentric universe. In this sense, innovation has components of experimental design or research whereby gathering, combining or exploring known ideas or precedents help generate new ideas. That is, designers, through analysing historical and contemporary innovations - the ideas before the ideas, past and present - identify which ideas have been successful and which haven't which in turn may lead to future innovations.
