/analogy

name: analogy
description: Forced Analogy / Structural Transplant — map the problem onto a structurally similar system from a distant domain (immune system, air-traffic control, restaurant kitchen, jazz ensemble) and transfer its mechanisms back. Use when a solution works but feels derivative, when the industry playbook is exhausted, or when a system in nature or another trade already solves this shape of problem. Triggers include "analogy", "forced analogy", "how would a hospital/kitchen/airport handle this", "transplant from another industry", "structurally similar system". Do NOT use for analytical work like debugging, code review, or implementation tasks.

Forced Analogy (Structural Transplant)

What this technique does

Take the problem, strip it down to its bare structure — who the actors are, what flows between them, where it jams — and find a system in a distant domain that has the same shape. An immune system, an air-traffic control tower, a restaurant kitchen at dinner rush. Then ask what that system *does* about the jam that you don't, and carry the mechanism back as a concrete idea. The point is distance: the further the source domain sits from your problem, the more its solutions will look nothing like the ones already on your whiteboard.

Source: Synectics (William J.J. Gordon, *Synectics: The Development of Creative Capacity*, 1961), specifically the "direct analogy" operation; widely used in biomimicry and TRIZ-adjacent practice.

Workflow

Step 1: Confirm the target

A valid target is a concrete creative or design problem: how to grow something, how to route something, how to redesign a process or a system. If it is unclear, ask one focused question — "What's the system you're trying to reshape, and where does it jam?"

Refuse requests to *perform* analytical work — debugging, reviewing code, implementing a change — and suggest an analytical approach instead. Redesigning or ideating about such a process is a valid creative target: "reinvent our code-review ritual" is in scope; "review this PR" is not.

Step 2: State the problem's structure in one sentence

Reduce the target to actors, flows, and the bottleneck. No domain vocabulary, no solution language — just the shape. For example: "many independent producers, one congested channel, quality varies." This sentence is the load-bearing part of the whole technique; if it still names your industry, it is not abstract enough yet.

Step 3: Draw 3-5 domains whose structure rhymes

Pull from [`references/domain-pool.md`](references/domain-pool.md). Choose domains whose structural property matches the sentence from Step 2, not domains that sound related to your problem. **Mix at least one biological, one operational, and one social/cultural** so the transplants come from genuinely different logics. Never run more than five in a batch.

Step 4: Per domain, map roles then transfer a mechanism

For each domain, do two things in order:

1. **Map the roles.** State plainly which part of your problem corresponds to which part of the domain: "our users are the foragers, our channel is the trail." If the mapping is clean, one line does it. 2. **Ask the transfer question:** "What does this domain DO about the bottleneck that we don't?" Then carry 1-2 of its actual mechanisms back as concrete ideas for your problem — not the imagery, the mechanism.

Step 5: Meta-pattern scan

After the batch, look across the mechanisms that transferred well and name the structural insight they share — "every domain that helped treated the bottleneck as a *routing* problem, not a *volume* problem." State it explicitly. This cross-domain observation is usually worth more than any single transplant.

Step 6: Honest ranking, no closure pressure

Pick the sharpest transplants. Say which are weak and why. Offer next moves — draw more domains, go deeper on one, switch technique, or stop — and let the user choose. Never push the user to commit.

Honesty mechanics

**One-forced-role rule.** A clean mapping costs you one metaphorical leap. The moment a domain needs a *second* forced role to keep working — "well, if the ants were also the queen, and the trail were also the nest..." — the structure doesn't actually rhyme, and you are now decorating rather than transplanting. Abandon it visibly and say why.

**Surface analogies are named and dropped.** A domain that shares *vocabulary* with your target but not *structure* is the most seductive trap and the most useless. Call it out as surface-level and drop it. A batch where every domain transfers cleanly is a tell that the output is being retrofitted; expect at least one honest abandonment.

**When no domain rhymes.** If every domain needs a second forced role, the fault is usually the Step 2 sentence, not the domains. Rewrite it once. If the rewrite still names no bottleneck, stop drawing domains — name the diagnosis, suggest the technique that fits it as the user's next move, and stop there rather than running it yourself:

• The structure sentence keeps coming out as a solution rather than a shape → suggest `concept-fan`, which climbs until the real problem appears.
• There is a genuine structure but nothing distant maps onto it → suggest `random-stimulus`, which needs no structural rhyme to make a jump.

What NOT to do

• **Don't pick domains that share vocabulary with the target.** Software-to-marketplace, app-to-platform — too close. The shared words hide the fact that no real transfer happened. The whole value is distance.
• **Don't transfer aesthetics instead of mechanisms.** "A coral reef is colorful and diverse, so our product should feel vibrant" is decoration, not a transplant. Transfer what the reef *does* (structure built by many small organisms becomes shelter for others), not how it looks.
• **Don't run more than 5 domains per batch.** Returns diminish and the mappings blur together.
• **Don't rescue a domain that needs more than one forced role.** Drop it