How to Use This Book
This book is designed for self-directed learning. You don't need a teacher or a classroom. From here, you enter the workshop: five deliberate ways to turn the object. Incubation was waiting for them; now you provoke the turn instead of waiting for it.
The star first. We open the workshop with analogy because it is the most proven technique of the five and the one that goes the farthest. Also, because it tends to build a bridge: what you learn here about recombining others' solutions will reappear, transformed, in the last technique of the workshop.
Prerequisite. This book assumes complete Modules I and II. You will work on your Pan-Atlantic, already loaded and incubated: the ideas you captured without judgment in the previous book are the starting point that analogy will sharpen.
Learning Objectives
Upon completing this book, you will be able to:
- Explain why the key to analogy is the shared functional structure and not superficial resemblance.
- Abstract a problem down to its functional skeleton, stripping away all the words from its original domain.
- Use biomimicry: search in nature, with almost 3,800 million years of R&D, for solutions to your problem's structure.
- Apply the map of analogous domains: abstract, find who already solved that structure, and adapt the solution.
- Recognize when your domain has been exhausted and the problem may be solved in another.
The Tumor and the Fortress
Here's a problem. Try to solve it for real before reading on.
A patient has a tumor in the stomach. There's a type of ray that, at high intensity, destroys the tumor. The problem: at that intensity, the ray also destroys all the healthy tissue it passes through to reach it. At low intensity, the ray is harmless to healthy tissue… but it doesn't damage the tumor either. How do you destroy the tumor without damaging the healthy tissue surrounding it?
Take a minute. If you're like most people, you'll struggle - only a small percentage of people solve this problem on their own.
Now read this other story, which seems to have nothing to do with it:
A general must take a fortress in the center of a country. Many roads lead to it, but each one is mined to explode if a large army passes, although small groups can cross without triggering the mines. The general divides his army into small groups, sends them down different roads, and has them converge at the same time on the fortress. He takes it.
Go back to the tumor. Do you see it now? Several low-intensity rays, from different directions, converging on the tumor: each one harmless as it passes through healthy tissue, but together, at the point where they intersect, enough to destroy it. It's the same solution as the general's, convergence of small forces from multiple directions, just in a different domain.
What you just experienced has a name and evidence: it's analogical transfer. The story of the fortress didn't give you new information about medicine. It gave you a structure, and that structure, when transferred, solved a problem that seemed closed without it. This is the technique of this book.
“Almost none of your problems are as original as you think. Someone, or something, has already solved it somewhere else.”, Thesis of analogy
Your domain has been exhausted; the problem is solved in another
You get stuck on a problem, in part, because you attack it with the tools and examples from your own field, and your field has already given what it had. But the same problem, in its abstract form, may have been solved decades or millions of years ago in a domain you would never look at: another industry, an ancient craft, a living organism.
The condition for this to work is just one, and it's the one that almost everyone fails: you have to search for shared functional structure, not superficial similarity. Superficial similarity deceives, it leads you to things that look like your problem but work differently. Functional structure is what the problem does, stripped of its appearance.
The step everyone skips: abstraction
If analogy is so powerful, why does it fail so often? Because people jump straight into searching for analogs without doing the prior work, and then search by surface. They find things that look alike, not things that work alike, and conclude that "analogy didn't work".
The step they skip is abstraction: reformulating the problem in neutral terms, without any words from its original domain. Not "I need a closure for the jacket", but "I need to join two things in a reversible way". The first formulation leads you to buttons and snaps, the same domain. The second opens you up to crab claws, tentacles, and plant hooks.
““How do I make my customers wait less in line?” keeps the problem in the “line” domain, and only produces line ideas: more checkout lanes, faster. Abstracted, “How do I make an inevitable wait time tolerable?”, the problem opens up to amusement parks (entertaining the line), elevators (the mirrors that made the wait “faster” without speeding anything up), and restaurants (giving something to do while waiting).”
The Biomimicry: Nature as a Catalog
There's an analogous domain that almost no one consults, yet it has resolved more problems than any other: nature. Evolution has been doing R&D for over 3,800 million years, testing, discarding, refining solutions under the most implacable pressure that exists, survival. What remains alive, works. Biomimicry (Benyus) proposes using nature as a model, measure, and mentor: seeking in organisms the structure that your problem needs.
Two verified examples show the technique executed to the end:
The Tool: the Analogous Domains Map
The technique is executed in three movements, and the order is mandatory:
- Abstract. Rewrite the problem in neutral terms, without a word from your domain. This is the difficult step and the one that decides everything.
- Search for who already solved it. Question: what other industry, what profession, what organism already solved this structure? Force yourself to include at least one natural domain.
- Bring and adapt. Take the solution from that domain and translate it to yours. Do not copy it literally: adapt it to your constraints.
The deliverable of this book is this map, filled with your Pan-Atlantic. But first, let's see the technique executed on the case.
Pan-Atlantic turned by analogy
First, the step that everyone skips. Let's abstract Pan-Atlantic by removing all transportation-related words, no ship, no truck, no port, no cargo. What does it do, in its bare structure?
Case thread, Pan-Atlantic. Step 1, Abstraction
Transfer units across the border between two incompatible media, with the minimum manipulation possible at the crossing point.
With the problem stripped bare like this, something notable happens: it stops being a logistics problem and becomes a problem that nature solves everywhere. Let's ask who else crosses a border between media:
Guided Practice
Now it's your turn. The deliverable is your map of analogous domains for Pan-Atlantic. Step 1, abstraction, is the one that decides everything: if you leave a single word related to transportation, you will stay in the logistical domain and won't find anything new. Strip the problem to the bone.
A door, if you want more
Glossary of Key Terms
- Analogical Transfer: Transferring the structure of a solution from one domain to another to solve an apparently unrelated problem (Gick and Holyoak).
- Functional Structure: What a problem does, stripped of its appearance; the level at which valid analogs are sought.
- Superficial Similarity: Deceptive similarity between problems that look alike but function differently; the trap of poorly made analogy.
- Abstraction: Reformulating the problem in neutral terms, without words from its original domain, to find distant analogs.
- Biomimicry: Looking to nature for a model, measure, and mentor, the structure that solves your problem (Benyus).
- Map of Analogous Domains: A three-step tool: abstract, find who solved that structure (including nature), and adapt the solution.
Final Reflection and Self-Assessment
Bibliography and Recommended Readings
- Gick, M. L. and Holyoak, K. J. (1980, 1983). Analogical Problem Solving / Schema Induction and Analogical Transfer. Cognitive Psychology. [The experimental basis of analogical transfer.]
- Benyus, J. (1997). Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. Harper. [Nature as model, measure and mentor.]
- Duncker, K. (1945). On Problem-Solving. [The radiation problem, origin of the fortress experiment.]
- Holyoak, K. J. and Thagard, P. (1995). Mental Leaps: Analogy in Creative Thought. MIT Press.
Next Topic
You made the first and most powerful turn in the workshop. You know how to abstract a problem to its structure, look for who already solved it, including nature, and bring the solution. Your Pan-Atlantic dossier now has a major direction: to encapsulate in a sealed, standard, and interoperable unit.
The next book, Topic 6: Inversion, turns the object around a surprising and opposite face. Instead of asking "how do I make this a success?", you will ask "how would I guarantee its complete failure?", and you will discover that inverted answers are often more honest and actionable than direct ones. With Pan-Atlantic: how would you ensure that ship loses as much money as possible? The answer will give you a lever that analogy did not show.
Almost none of your problems are as original as you think. Someone, or something, has already solved it somewhere else.