When our biggest client threatened to cancel their contract with us and go to another supplier, our R&D department came up with an amazing innovation just in time. It convinced the client to stay with us. Necessity is the mother of invention (Not macht erfinderisch)
Versions of this phrase have been around since Plato’s Republic, but the first actual use of the exact phrase comes from Richard Franck who used it in his book Northern Memoirs, calculated for the meridian of Scotland in 1658.
The phrase was re-popularised in the 1960s when Frank Zappa named his jazz/rock band The Mothers of Invention.