A number of years ago, I stumbled across an old pie tin at a flea market. It was a pretty standard affair with a plain rim and a few small holes punched through the bottom to keep the crust crispy. I'm not much of a baker, but I was fascinated by the familiar name embossed on the bottom: Frisbie's Pies. So I forked over $5, hoping to own a piece of intellectual-property history.

When I got home, I did a bit of research and learned the Frisbie pie tin was, in fact, a predecessor of today's ubiquitous Frisbee flying disc; so I hung the tin on my office wall. And I was reminded of my flea-market purchase recently when I happened to see the newspaper headline "Inventor of Frisbee Dies" over an article about the passing of Arthur "Spud" Melin, 77, in June. It got me thinking about innovation-both where ideas come from and what makes them successful in the marketplace.

Melin, whose company Wham-O in 1967 received U.S. patent 3,359,678 for the plastic flying disc, was unquestionably a toy-marketing genius. In addition to the phenomenally successful Frisbee, he also gave kids such iconic playthings as the Hula Hoop, the Superball and the Slip 'n' Slide water toy. Little wonder he was able to sell the company-which he started in his garage as a college student in 1948-for some $12 million when he decided to retire in 1982.

Spud Melin had an enormous impact on my childhood and my whole generation. But he in no way whatsoever invented the Frisbee, despite what the obituary headlines or the U.S. patent office might say. Rather, his story is a reminder that inventing something is rarely as important as what's done with the invention afterward. In high-tech fields, we are often so fixated on new creations that we forget that being first is usually not as important as being best. Indeed, the history of the Frisbee makes a pretty good parable about modern-day invention.