Ideation based on analogies and association

Step-by-step guide

1. ‍Look at your starting point for ideation and consider if and how you will bring previous knowledge into the room (for example, as a research wall or as key insights).
2. Invite the right people to work beside your core team for the exercise (this might include people who know the background, people with no preconceptions, experts, representatives of the implementation team, people who will deliver the service, users, management, etc.).
3. For analogies, skip to step 4. For random association, choose some random words, phrases, or images which will be useful. Open a book at random, or use one of the many random word and image generators online. Then skip to step 6.
4. Prepare your analogies. This is hard, but it gets easier with experience. The basic process is to reduce the challenge to its essential characteristics, try to separate it from its context, and use this as a starting point to look for similar contexts. For example, if you are searching for innovative traffic flow solutions, you might boil this down to a need to “coordinate a smooth flow of elements in a complex system.” [02] This would lead you to analogies like blood circulation, liquids engineering, plumbing, logistics, even finance. (And it might prompt you to invite doctors, engineers, plumbers, logisticians, or economists to your ideation session.) To get there, ask yourself: Who, or which discipline, has already solved a similar problem? In what context would you experience similar challenges or situations? What does the challenge remind you of?
5. Select the best analogies. Think about how close each analogy is to the original challenge – in the traffic flow example, logistics would be a “near field” analogy, but medicine and finance would be “far.” For more novel ideas, it seems useful to use “far” analogies – even though they are tougher to work with and actually generate fewer ideas. Less common (and hence less familiar) analogies also seem more helpful than common ones, so avoid analogies which the group have used too often before.
6. Set up in workable table-sized groups. Invite the groups to stop thinking about the initial challenge (perhaps run an intense warm-up to help them), and consider one of the analogies or associations instead. What does it suggest to them? How have similar problems been conquered there? For example, if the group are working on a service to help people consume social media responsibly, they might look at solutions around other types of overconsumption, like eating. Many of the principles of managed eating – reward systems, tracking the amount eaten – could be easily transferred to social media use. Make notes. 
7. Repeat for other analogies or associations.
8. Now consider your notes in the context of the original challenge. Can the ideas and experience be translated? What ideas do they give you?
9. Take your (translated) ideas into an idea selection stage.

Method notes

• ‍If you are using other ideation methods as well, try them before you switch to analogies or associations. Most groups find it easier to work “closer to home” at first, before opening up. 
• Some groups find it hard to take random associations seriously until they have experienced its successful use. Explain its pedigree [03] as an ideation technique, or ask them to simply suspend judgment until after the exercise.
• If an association seems difficult, stick with it. Or build a chain of associations – cake leads to baker leads to flour leads to flower leads to garden leads to summer – and look at each one.