INTUINOVARE

Search space and focus on analogies

In troubled times in most Western societies, there are rumors that innovation will save the economy.

Innovation to face this challenge has to find a consistent and sustainable method to produce streams of new ideas, able to solve the problems created by innovation in which were not taken into account the undesirable consequences of its application.

We know that new ideas are often old ideas with new packaging and are usually “recycled” with new equipment by a process called analogy.

We may think that analogy is the ability to find similarities in two different areas of knowledge that nevertheless doesn’t seem similar on their surface, or putting it in another way, the “transfer of a prior knowledge about a family situation, called source, to a situation which should be elucidated, called target.”

Imagine we are faced with a problem:

What is that our situation reminds us?

Which other areas of our life or work may be in similar situations?

Who does similar things that are not on our work discipline?

People solve everyday problems, using analogies, on the basis of associations formed over time but this set of standards can also be a source of error. This can happen because these patterns of association give people the ability to solve problems quickly but also limit the search space of the solution.

The analogy is an effective tool for the communication of ideas and new products or new services. To use the analogy when talking about innovation is a key factor in the development of an idea to pass mental barriers placed by decision makers.

The ideas need to survive and thrive, even when subjected to varying content and language of disciplines such as engineering, business or design.

“Analogies are ubiquitous in science, both in theory and experiments. Based on an ethnographic study of a research lab in neural engineering, we focus on a case of conceptual innovation where the cross-breeding of two types of analogies led to a breakthrough.”

It is important to realize that analogies provide both a clear focus as a filtering process of ideas.

Even in an organized environment, always when joining services, people or processes in the development of a product or services, it is possible that the talents of experts propose changes that would have justification when viewed individually, but that would be wrong in an overview of the product or service.

The analogy can be used to make clear and specific the innovation.

It’s easy to get distracted or change focus when it comes to a process of innovation. The development of the idea, gain more clarity, but also changes, and change can kill the idea. The analogy is not only a focal point of the definition of an idea; the analogy also orients, aligns and highlights the product or service.

The path to success is done with clarity and with the use of the analogy is more likely that an idea is solidified in the way it was originally conceived.

Discover the domain right and the right place for an analogy is not easy and to do it is required, a lot of energy and a lot of confidence in us and in others.

The trick to use an analogy, you realize that there are things about which we already know something and this can help us solve a new problem.

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