The inventor's paradox has been used to describe phenomena in mathematics, programming, and logic, as well as other areas that involve critical thinking.
In the book How to Solve It, Hungarian mathematician George Pólya introduces what he defines as the inventor's paradox: The more ambitious plan may have more chances of success […] provided it is not based on a mere pretension but on some vision of the things beyond those immediately present.
[2] When solving a problem, the natural inclination typically is to remove as much excessive variability and produce limitations on the subject at hand as possible.
[3] The goal is to find elegant and relatively simple solutions to broader problems, allowing for the ability to focus on the specific portion that was originally of concern.
[7] According to Bruce Tate, some of the most successful frameworks are simple generalizations of complex problems, and he says that Visual Basic, the Internet, and Apache web servers plug-ins are primary examples of such practice.