Analogy, a Tool for Exlaplanation or Breakthrough Innovation? 2 Characteristics that Make the Difference

In 1913 Bohr discovered the structure of the atom using an analogy.

If you’ve ever been skiing, you’ve benefitted from an analogy innovation. The fact that skis don’t vibrate when you’re moving at a high speed is the result of a technology found in bowed instruments like violins and cellos. The technology that prevented vibrations at high frequencies from instruments was transferred for the same purpose to skis.

Product managers can use analogies to get an idea across, however, with more cognitive effort integrating two essential characteristics, as was done with the skis, they can be used to create novel, disruptive products.

Connect distant worlds and domains

In the skiing example, the world of snow sports met the world of musical instruments. Kent Brown, an entrepreneur in the world of polaroid photography, created the industry-standard ceramic composite from looking at sperm-freezing technologies, where the key was the prevention of ice-crystal formation.

Looking outside your industry is more cognitively demanding requiring you to abstract the problem and use your knowledge of other industries to connect the two.

Having a team of people who comes from diverse backgrounds and experiences is a clear catalyst for innovation.

Connect the non-obvious and difficult to see

A product manager tasked with the creation of a new road circulation system in Germany may look at what the roads look like in Japan. However, this is surface level and obvious. The non-obvious would be looking at the human circulatory system and drawing useful similarities from this. It would be looking at how ants, the insects, move around their environment never overtaking on crashing into each other.

Really understanding a problem is understanding its deep structure basis versus the surface appearance of it, and finding similar structures in other worlds. This is what allows us to go beyond incremental improvements and make ‘mental leaps’.

Socratic questioning is a method product managers can use to understand the problem deeply and thoroughly and with some effort, even make industry breakthroughs.

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