Mash Up
Steal ideas from places that solved a similar problem differently.
Every problem has been solved somewhere else under different constraints. Mash Up is the discipline of finding those solutions and extracting the transferable principle — not copying the surface feature. The discipline is in the transfer: what made it work there, and does the same mechanism apply here?
How to run this
- Define your challenge precisely. Vague challenge = shallow analogies.
- Find 2–3 domains that face a structurally similar problem.
- For each domain, describe how they solved it.
- Extract the principle that made their solution work.
- Apply the principle to your challenge — not the surface feature.
Mash Up
Reasoning by analogy · IDEO · popularised in design thinking practicePicking analogies too similar to your domain. "Airlines solve this too" tells you little if you're in logistics. Find the outlier: how does a hospital manage queues? How does a coral reef solve resource scarcity?
A principle that, when you say it out loud, someone says "that's so obvious — why aren't we already doing that?" That's analogy working.
When you have one transferred principle that would meaningfully change your approach, and you can describe the mechanism — not just the surface similarity.
Try it interactively with WAiDE
WAiDE will help you find unexpected analogies and extract the transferable principles. You'll leave with an applied insight and a session report.