Improving the Effectiveness of Ideation Using Analogies: Choosing the Right External Stimuli
Authors: Stefan Werner Knoll, Graham Horton, Claudia Krull, Tim Dittmar.
Issue: 2015, Vol. 1
Abstract
The purpose of the research described in this paper is to improve the understanding of the analogy technique for generating ideas, in particular for business applications. There has been very little research done on this topic, and thus hardly any advice is available for innovation managers and marketers, who rely on good ideas to achieve their objectives. Our goal is to provide concrete guidelines to practitioners for improving the effectiveness of the analogy technique.
We have created a model that distinguishes between two classes of stimuli (concrete and abstract) that are used to generate analogies and two classes of analogy (near and far) that can be used to inspire ideas. We hypothesize that abstract stimuli will lead to more far analogies and that far analogies will lead to a larger number of good ideas. We performed an experiment to obtain evidence for these hypotheses in which subjects were asked to come up with solutions for a simple marketing task using both concrete and abstract stimuli to generate first analogies and from these, ideas.
The experimental results show strong support for both hypotheses. We conclude that abstract stimuli are superior to concrete ones when the analogy method is carried out in two phases and that far analogies are to be preferred when a single-phase version is to be used. This knowledge is immediately applicable in a wide range of ideation settings and gives rise to new research questions regarding the best choice of stimuli.
Keywords: ideation, cognitive model, analogical thinking, external stimuli, analogies, good ideas.
To download the article, please click on the PDF file or read on this page below:
Authors: Stefan Werner Knoll, Graham Horton, Claudia Krull, Tim Dittmar.
Issue: 2015, Vol. 1
Abstract
The purpose of the research described in this paper is to improve the understanding of the analogy technique for generating ideas, in particular for business applications. There has been very little research done on this topic, and thus hardly any advice is available for innovation managers and marketers, who rely on good ideas to achieve their objectives. Our goal is to provide concrete guidelines to practitioners for improving the effectiveness of the analogy technique.
We have created a model that distinguishes between two classes of stimuli (concrete and abstract) that are used to generate analogies and two classes of analogy (near and far) that can be used to inspire ideas. We hypothesize that abstract stimuli will lead to more far analogies and that far analogies will lead to a larger number of good ideas. We performed an experiment to obtain evidence for these hypotheses in which subjects were asked to come up with solutions for a simple marketing task using both concrete and abstract stimuli to generate first analogies and from these, ideas.
The experimental results show strong support for both hypotheses. We conclude that abstract stimuli are superior to concrete ones when the analogy method is carried out in two phases and that far analogies are to be preferred when a single-phase version is to be used. This knowledge is immediately applicable in a wide range of ideation settings and gives rise to new research questions regarding the best choice of stimuli.
Keywords: ideation, cognitive model, analogical thinking, external stimuli, analogies, good ideas.
To download the article, please click on the PDF file or read on this page below:
| Improving the Effectiveness of Ideation Using Analogies: Choosing the Right External Stimuli |
