Left to its own devices, Apple might never have come up with the iPod. The now-ubiquitous music player was the brainchild of one Tony Fadell, a former employee of Philips, whose concept failed to raise sufficient funding, prompting him to hawk it around established corporates.

Less game-changing innovations also owe their existence to outsiders. The military came up trumps when a microwave manufacturer wanted to develop methods of heating more evenly – the soldiers’ system had been tried and tested with blood plasma on the battlefields.