Thanks Thomas. Good logical expansion on what I was saying. Didn't know that the starwheel took it's roots from somewhere else, but I'm not surprised either. Even the Masque idea from VC stemmed from the starwheel, though when it debuted, no one mentioned.
I think genuine "creations" mainly take place in a fledgling industry, where boundaries are being explored. While the industry seems to have saturated for a while now, we have advances today, but they are advances. I think gone are the days of Abraham Louis Breguet and his Tourbillon. Yet there are some ground breaking ideas today that are being ignored. Today, some of the true blue creations are hidden by others under some clever counter marketing ploys. The Seiko Spring Drive, not an entirely new concept (but started by Seiko still, i think), was one of the few really fresh approaches to time keeping. Yet it receives little attention in collector's eyes. Why does the world's largest and truest in house manufacture not garner such appreciation?
I bought a nice Seiko Brightz previously, and was questioned by a would-be watch enthusiast "why on earth would you buy a Seiko?" Ignoring the fact that this brights comes with a full polished and sculpted titanium case and enamel dial, I was thinking that this guy was off his rocker for simply questioning the integrity of Seiko, or that he simply didn't know as much as he thought he did.
Today, in many industries, true advances in technology are expensive. (sort of like the law of diminishing returns) To think that a new brand with little financial support could have made these advances is a little naive, I think. I think the GP dual escapement idea is one of the few true advances today, but that doesn't seem to be helping the brand sell. as well as it should. Yet I'm sure this idea cost Gino Macaluso a lot of money.
One thing to note about advances. The whole world isn't questioning something here. General coatings of watches today are PVD and DLC. These are surface layers. this technology is easily 20 to 30 years old. Yet PVD is a desired finish. It's crude, flimsy, and scratchable. How come no one notices that Cvstos is using Plasma? A surface penetrating treatment that's quite unusual in the watch line. (read: thi means that when you scratch it, if you do, it's probably still black underneath!) It's a rather superior technology in surface treatment that no one seems to have picked up on.
Alas, how much corksniffing must we do before we realise that the only true value of anything is our own appreciation of the item, and not what others think of it?