If unlike things are really alike in some ways, perhaps, they are so in others. Alexander Graham Bell observed the analogy between the inner workings of the ear and the movement of a stout piece of membrane to move steel, and conceived the telephone. Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, in one day, after developing an analogy between a toy funnel and the motions of a paper man and sound vibrations. Underwater construction was made possible by observing how shipworms tunnel into timber by first constructing tubes. Einstein derived and explained many of his abstract principles by drawing analogies with everyday occurrences such as rowing a boat or standing on a platform while a train passed by.
Geniuses prepare themselves for chance.
Whenever we attempt to do something and fail, we end up doing something else. As simplistic as this statement may seem, it is the first principle of creative accident. We may ask ourselves why we have failed to do what we intended, and this is the reasonable, expected thing to do. Answering that question in a novel, unexpected way is the essential creative act. It is not luck, but creative insight of the highest order.