Idiomatic Metaphor : duplicate a basic method which has already previously been created or optimized by others.
If you ask any sane person about the greatest discovery of all the time, they will agree that it’s the wheel. The wheel has been reinvented so many times that reinventing the wheel has now become an idiom. If it hadn’t been the plethora of inventors and engineers trying to improve and adapt wheels for various purposes, we would still be traveling in Fred Flintstone’s footmobile.
The materials we use have changed from stones to alloys to now carbon-based substances. The content of the wheel has changed, the rim, development of strokes, aerodynamics of the wheel all were possible because someone somewhere reconsidered the novel invention of the wheel.
There are tons of debates that whether we should reinvent the wheel or not. Many people agree with it while others disagree. Believers suggest it’s a good way to think more critically and provide a better invention, while critics say why should we recreate something which is already there. They both are correct at the same time.
We need to understand that we don’t reinvent just for the sake of reinvention instead we should comprehend the situation and do the appropriate thing. For example, you run a company which sells Peanut Butter and you want to go online. Then there is no need to invent a way to interact online instead you can use online resources. But if you want to improve consistency of Peanut Butter then you might have to reinvent the wheel, breakdown each step in order to optimize each step of the process. This is how the peanut butter industry will progress.
Don’t reinvent the wheel because you can do it within minutes instead do it because you can develop a better, faster and optimized solution. Don’t do it just for the sake of doing instead do it because it is your requirement.
The notion of not reinventing the wheel is popular in the programming world, which I agree with. But sometimes it is necessary to develop things from scratch so that it goes along with your product and does not cause problems. Also, if someone is trying to reinvent the wheel, don’t downtrodden them instead encourage them to approach invention with clear intentions. We have not run out of ideas and we never will, every time you stop someone from redoing an invention, you are shutting down the possibility of the next breakthrough. Even if there is no output, the educational value through reinventing is too significant. So encourage people to reinvent!