Analogues
When your own field has run out of ideas, borrow from one that has already solved a similar problem. This lesson covers choosing a useful analogue and pulling the transferable principle out of it rather than copying the surface.
After this lesson you can
- Choose an analogue from a different world that shares your underlying problem.
- Name the principle underneath a practice, which is the part that actually transfers.
- Generate several analogues rather than defending the first one.
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Module Overview
Analogous research means learning from a situation that shares the shape of your problem while looking nothing like it. It is useful when you cannot observe the real thing, and useful again when somebody in another field has already solved the part you are stuck on.
The example is an operating theatre, which a team could not sit in for obvious reasons. They watched a Formula One pit crew instead: fast, high stakes, tightly coordinated, precise. What they took from the pit lane led to real changes in the operating room.
To do it, describe your own situation twice over, once physically and once emotionally. For an airport queue that is winding barriers and telling line-jumpers from people with genuine need, and it is boredom, anxiety and frustration. Then find other places with those same attributes, such as a cinema, a theme park queue or a doctor's waiting room, and go and watch one or two. Do not hunt for exact parallels; the distant ones tend to be where the surprises are. You are after inspiration, not evidence.
Where this usually goes wrong
- Benchmarking a direct competitor and calling it an analogue.
- Copying the practice, which arrives in your setting as fancy dress.
- Stopping at the first analogue that flatters the idea you already had.
Check it landed
3 questions, and one of them has no right answer. You get the reasoning either way.
You are trying to cut the time patients wait in A&E. Which analogue is most likely to be useful?
What do you take away from an analogue?
You want to improve how new staff are inducted. Which analogue would you go and look at?
Sign in to answer these and see the reasoning behind each one.
Put it to work
2 templates go with this lesson. Each one has its own guide on when and how to use it.
