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DEVELOPING NEW BUSINESS IDEAS140

children’s books under an imprint of DC Thomson. As a motorcycle
enthusiast, he had spotted an analogy between what did exist in a
related field – waterproof and tear-proof roadmaps and road-users’
atlases – and what could exist in the world of children’s books.
Reinforcement of the analogy of indestructibility came from his
observation that ramblers and walkers also had strong but thin paper
for their guides.108

how to transfer an underlying principle The spirit of the
technique is to identify the essence or underlying principle of the
opportunity which you are currently addressing to suggest analogies –
situations or processes which are similar but different. These analogous
situations or processes may help capture the opportunity which you are
considering; alternatively, they may create new and unexpected
perspectives on the opportunity which require further elaboration.
Either way, seeking analogies is an excellent way of thinking outside
the box.

seeking analogies is an excellent way of
thinking outside the box

Good practice suggests that you should use animate analogies with
problems involving non-living things and vice versa.

Once you have developed a list of analogies to the underlying
principle, you select the most promising and describe it in detail,
listing parts, uses and functions, taking care to include action-oriented
phrases. You then examine each of the descriptions within the selected
analogy, seeking stimuli for further ideas and refinements.

how a computer company learned from cooking The technique is best
illustrated by a real-life example. In the early 1990s, Hewlett-Packard was
struggling with inventory cost and product availability for its popular HP
DeskJet printer. In order to maximise economies of manufacturing scale,
production was centralised in a single ‘global’ plant. The three regional
markets of North America, Asia and Europe all required the product to be
regionalised in terms of power supply, documentation and packaging.
Difficulty in accurately predicting demand resulted in significant region-
specific inventories being maintained in the regional distribution centres
(see Figure 4.5).