No new invention is completely original and everything stands on the shoulders of what has come before. Why try to come up with an original idea when someone else has already done the hard work for you? Is there a product or process from another industry that you can make disruptive in your market?
Francois Hennebique needed a stronger building material than concrete. While attending the Paris Exhibition of 1867, he found an exhibit for concrete flowerpots that contained a metal mesh. The need for reinforced concrete in the building industry, which made skyscrapers possible, had already been invented in the gardening context by Joseph Monier.
Carbozyme Inc. needed to create an efficient way to remove carbon dioxide from the air so they could make filters for smokestacks. The key solution had been around for millions for years and was used every time anyone took a breath. The human lung efficiently removes carbon dioxide from the bloodstream and Carbozyme adapted this design into an effective smokestack filter.
As high as 90% of the problems we solve today have already been solved in a different context, according to estimates by problem-solving experts. All great innovators cast a wide net to incite creative thought by looking beyond their category and into analogous businesses around the world. The problem: time, effort and often happenstance needed to seek out all those corresponding ideas and technologies.
New software just released finds these solutions from different contexts—also called analogous solutions. Just type in two words (e.g., reinforce concrete or remove carbon) into Analogy Finder and it easily and inexpensively finds solutions to accomplish what you need. Further, it takes into account the many ways that people might express the goal. For example, there are many synonyms of reinforce (strengthen, bolster, enhance, fortify, intensify, etc.) and perhaps a few for concrete (cement, mortar, grout, etc.). Analogy Finder lets you edit the lists that it finds, and then combines all the verbs and nouns into a large set of search phrases. In essence, you type in one goal and Analogy Finder performs many searches, perhaps hundreds, and organizes the results.
Currently, Analogy Finder searches the U.S. Patent database but will continually be expanded to search other patent databases, scientific journals, and other promising online resources. Some companies even want us to search their own corporate data because they cannot find the relevant ideas from their own company’s history of projects.
Analogous solutions are great for businesses because they get stalled projects moving again and decrease time to market. Before analogy-finding software existed, cross-context discoveries happened accidentally. You either had to stumble upon it yourself or know someone who happened to know something about the other crucial context. Too much chance was involved. Analogy Finder makes the accidental discovery a more regular and predictable occurrence. Analogy Finder drastically increases your odds of finding the key idea for your problem. You can now systematically search through the vast number of contexts in the U.S. Patent database and soon you will be able to search through many more contexts in scientific journals and other resources.
So, the next time you have a problem to solve, don’t try to reinvent the wheel and don’t wait for an accidental discovery. Use Analogy Finder to quickly find the thing you need from a distant context. You will smoothly be moving ahead instead of stalling out and wasting time.
For more information and Analogy Finder success stories, contact Tony at
This post is written by Tony McCaffrey, PhD and Debra Kaye.
