Analogy thinking

Hi, I'm Claire, an innovation consultant at Board of Innovation. And today we're going to talk about analogy thinking. This is a great tool to use when you're in your solution development phase because it actually pulls from a lot of different existing great solutions and helps transform them into something that could work for you. So we like to say that 80% of great ideas actually come from something that already existed before. So one really good example is actually actually Velcro. So we all take that for granted now, but it's a pretty great innovation used on shoes and different materials all over. And it was actually created by a guy that really just liked to take walks with his dog and he would get those burrs from different plants stuck on his dog's fur. And he actually used that to inspire the idea for the hook and eye closure that actually is used in Velcro. So we like to take that same mentality when we think about our analogy thinking. So if I was going to be using this tool, so I would print out my analogy thinking canvas and I actually would place my. How might we. At the top. So how might we recreate a saving experience for Millennials that's more playful and socially engaging? So say that that is our. How might we. What we would do is actually then do a little bit of research into some interesting companies or services that maybe are using a business model that we think we may want to try, or we've seen a lot of success from them. We often hear companies like Airbnb or Uber or Google are really popular to use for analogy thinking, but also look into areas that are maybe interesting in your industry or adjacent industries or looking at the market actually that you're trying to target. So maybe a company that does really, really well with Millennials in this case. Okay, so now you've started to think and brainstorm about some interesting companies to look at. I would say this is a good moment to divide and conquer. If you're with your team, you can actually say that each person takes one example or one company to look a little bit deeper into and learn a little bit more about and present to your team what they've found. This is a nice activity if you have some downtime or if your team likes to do research and then come back to the group. Often we like to use some triggers and some cases that we have pre made, but you may not have pre made cases in your case. So say we were going to look into some cases. Let's see some examples. So say we have friendsurance, peer to peer Insurance concept spreading risk among family and relatives. So we put down Friendsurance as an example. Over on the left hand side, this is where we actually put all the different companies that we've researched. On the right hand side we actually save that for the ideas. So we actually create new ideas based off of what we've seen. Over on the left we may look at Friendsurance and we actually may find several things about for insurance that are actually inspiring. And that's great. Then we could add that in additional post. Its here we have a couple other startups to just trigger us as well. So Darby providing workout programs, challenges, exercises and meal plans that are really, really customized. Also patients like me. So this is an online platform that actually connects patients with similar diseases so that they can really talk to each other and help each other out. It's a really nice service. So say we filled out this whole side and we had some nice sharing moments about these startups. Then our second piece is actually to do a bit of an individual brainstorm because we love that hybrid brainstorming. So individual first, then sharing with the group to come up with ideas based on what we've seen from the successful companies on the left. So for example, one idea that we could have. So say we're actually looking at this AI and this actually really customized workouts and programs. We actually want to maybe do predictive AI for custom offers for our saving experience. Okay. Also say we are looking at Friendsurance. It's this peer to peer insurance concept that actually spreads risk among a group of people. Well, maybe one really good idea could be actually crowdsourcing your savings. So maybe you and your friends are actually saving for a vacation together. And last but not least, say we're looking at patients like me and we're connecting patients with similar chronic diseases. This is actually one of my personal favorite ideas. So a dating service that actually pairs people with the same purchasing habits and mindset. Maybe that's a way to actually make it a much more engaging social experience. So this exercise is wonderful to come up with some new ideas based on some things that we've already seen as successful in the past. It can help your team really de risk because we've actually already seen them work in other environments. So you're really taking those ideas and just putting them in a new environment for them to thrive. So good luck with your analogy thinking. Hopefully you guys can come up with some really interesting new ones. Can't wait to see what they are. All right, if you want to know more, come to boardofinnovation.com tools and find everything about analogy thinking and more for all of your innovation needs.