Coaching practices for Cross Domain Innovation
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Cross Domain Innovation, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I only ever read and learn inside my own specialty, and my ideas have started to feel inbred and predictable
- I have a cross-pollinated idea that might be brilliant or might be nonsense
- Everything I come up with is the same kind of answer everyone in my field would give
- I keep coming up dry on new ideas, and I’ve realized I only ever read and follow stuff inside my own field
- Almost everyone I talk to does roughly what I do, so we just keep recycling the same ideas back at each other
Practices that may help
- Intentional field-crossing
Regularly study a field entirely outside your domain and ask what it could teach yours.
The Medici Effect: Innovation at the Intersection - Run low-cost experiments on intersectional ideas
Test cross-domain ideas quickly and cheaply before investing in them fully.
The Medici Effect: Innovation at the Intersection - The Medici Effect: Innovation at the Intersection
Frans Johansson’s Medici Effect argues that the most original innovations occur at the "intersection" — where concepts from different disciplines, cultures, or domains collide and combine in unexpected ways. The framework is consistent with research on analogical reasoning and the value of diverse knowledge networks for creative output; the book itself is a practitioner synthesis rather than a research study. - Cross-pollinate from distant domains
Pull ideas and analogies from fields unrelated to your problem.
Divergent Thinking: Generating Many Ideas - Build a deliberately broad input diet
Expose yourself to domains far outside your expertise to stock the combinatorial engine.
Combinatorial Creativity, Made Practical - Build a diverse network deliberately
Connect with people in different disciplines, cultures, and functions — not primarily with people who do what you do.
The Medici Effect: Innovation at the Intersection - Reframe problems using cross-domain language
Describe your problem in a different field’s vocabulary — then use that vocabulary to search for solutions.
The Medici Effect: Innovation at the Intersection - Combine
Ask: what two things — purposes, materials, functions, or ideas — could be merged to create something new?
SCAMPER: A Systematic Creativity Technique - Actively connect ideas across projects and topics
When working on a project, deliberately search your notes for ideas from unrelated domains that might apply.
Building a Second Brain (BASB), Made Practical - Transfer solutions across domains by mapping the structure of the problem
When stuck, search for problems in other domains with the same relational structure.
Analogical Reasoning
Related concerns
- Cross Industry Innovation
Frans Johansson’s Medici Effect argues that the most original innovations occur at the "intersection" — where concepts from different disciplines, cultures, or domains collide and combine in unexpected ways. The framework is consistent with research on analogical reasoning and the value of diverse knowledge networks for creative output; the book itself is a practitioner synthesis rather than a research study.
- Cross Domain Thinking
When stuck, search for problems in other domains with the same relational structure.
Transfer solutions across domains by mapping the structure of the problem
- Diverse Network Innovation
Connect with people in different disciplines, cultures, and functions — not primarily with people who do what you do.
Build a diverse network deliberately
- Network Diversity Innovation
Connect with people in different disciplines, cultures, and functions — not primarily with people who do what you do.
- Creative Intersection
Frans Johansson’s Medici Effect argues that the most original innovations occur at the "intersection" — where concepts from different disciplines, cultures, or domains collide and combine in unexpected ways. The framework is consistent with research on analogical reasoning and the value of diverse knowledge networks for creative output; the book itself is a practitioner synthesis rather than a research study.
- Cross Disciplinary Collaboration
Let a conversation partner from another domain ask the naive questions that expose your hidden assumptions.
Seek conversations with people from radically different fields
Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.