Finding Ideas by Borrowing From Other Fields

Innovation rarely starts from a blank page. Finding inspiration for innovative ideas is a proactive skill you can train, not a lightning bolt you wait for. If you are working on a creative challenge, this guide shows you how to borrow from unexpected places and turn scattered references into valuable solutions.

Why do great ideas come from outside your industry?

Most breakthroughs happen when someone connects two worlds that seemed unrelated. And there is a classic story that proves it.

In 1878, Dr. Tarnier ran the maternity ward of a Paris hospital where infant mortality was out of control [00:52]. Walking through the Paris Zoo, he came across a chicken egg incubator and thought, I have an idea. Shortly after, his hospital implemented the first baby incubator, and within three years, infant mortality at the Paris Maternity Hospital dropped by 50% [02:00].

Imagine what his colleagues said when he walked back from the zoo. Probably something like "you're crazy, we're not animals, that will never work." And yet, that borrowed idea has saved millions of lives.

What is an analogous context? It is a field, industry, or situation different from yours that shares a similar problem or logic. You study it to borrow ideas you can adapt to your own challenge.

How can you remix existing ideas into new solutions?

The story does not end with Dr. Tarnier. Traditional incubators are expensive and depend on constant electricity, which makes them unfeasible in many low income regions.

A group of Stanford students created Embrace, a small cloth bag warmed by a wax pouch that heats the baby without complex machinery [03:34]. It does not replace every function of an incubator, but it warms premature babies, which is critical to saving their lives. Embrace has helped hundreds of thousands of babies in more than 22 countries, at a fraction of the cost.

And notice something: Embrace looks a lot like a sleeping bag. The students asked how people survive extreme cold and adapted that logic to newborns. They did not start from zero, and neither should you.

As Tim Harford puts it, creativity often comes when you take an idea from its original context and you move it somewhere else. It is easier to think outside the box if you spend your time clambering from one box into another [05:15].

This is why becoming a T-shaped professional, someone with deep expertise in one area and broad curiosity across many, matters so much. If you only stick to one field, you miss the references that fuel real innovation.

What is a real example of remixing to innovate?

Think about Uber. Take a network of sub-utilized taxis, combine it with the smartphones already in millions of pockets, and you get a solution nobody had connected before [06:34]. Two ordinary elements, one powerful intersection.

How do you remix ideas into innovation? Identify two elements from different contexts that share a hidden logic with your problem, then connect them in a way that adds new value for your user.

What are the three types of analogous contexts you should explore?

When you look for inspiration, you have three lanes to work with. Each one pushes you a little further from the obvious.

• Direct inspiration from your industry. Look at competitors and at companies far from your market solving the same challenge. It is basic, but essential [07:24].
• Indirect inspiration from other industries. Ask what you really do for your customer, then find who else adds value in a similar way, even if their product is nothing like yours [08:04].
• Abstract inspiration from trends or disciplines. Explore fields that seem completely unrelated but share an underlying pattern with your challenge [08:23].

The key is asking open minded questions. Instead of drawing a flower vase, ask what problem a flower vase is trying to solve. Instead of copying what someone in your category does, ask who else creates value for a similar user in a different way.

How do you apply an analogous context to a real challenge?

Imagine your challenge is: how might we get young people from hating to excited about doing their taxes? [09:11].

You could look at Slack, a productivity tool that mixes serious topics like meetings and efficiency with a fun, playful tone [09:29]. What Slack does well:

• Puts fun at the center of the product experience.
• Uses humor in customer service interactions.
• Builds marketing campaigns that turn boring topics into engaging ones.

That mix of fun plus serious utility becomes your inspiration. You are not copying Slack, you are stealing the logic of how they solve their challenge and applying it to taxes for a young audience.

Now it is your turn. Think about your own innovation challenge and share in the comments: what direct competitor are you watching, what indirect industry surprises you, and what abstract trend could unlock a new angle for your idea?