Coaching practices for Cross Industry Innovation
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Cross Industry Innovation, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- Almost everyone I talk to does roughly what I do, so we just keep recycling the same ideas back at each other
- I have a cross-pollinated idea that might be brilliant or might be nonsense
- I only ever read and learn inside my own specialty, and my ideas have started to feel inbred and predictable
- I keep coming up dry on new ideas, and I’ve realized I only ever read and follow stuff inside my own field
- I have two separate things that each work fine on their own, and I keep sensing that the real idea is in mashing them into one
Practices that may help
- 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. - 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 - 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 - 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 - Build a deliberately broad input diet
Expose yourself to domains far outside your expertise to stock the combinatorial engine.
Combinatorial Creativity, Made Practical - Combine
Ask: what two things — purposes, materials, functions, or ideas — could be merged to create something new?
SCAMPER: A Systematic Creativity Technique - Cross-pollinate from distant domains
Pull ideas and analogies from fields unrelated to your problem.
Divergent Thinking: Generating Many Ideas - Adapt
Ask: what could be adapted or borrowed from another context, industry, or era to solve this problem?
SCAMPER: A Systematic Creativity Technique - Build a liquid network: expose yourself to people at the edge of different fields
Seek out conversations and environments where ideas from adjacent fields are in the air — most good ideas are collisions, not inventions.
The Adjacent Possible, Made Practical - Exaptation: look for how a tool or skill in one context could serve a different one
Ask of any existing skill, tool, or process you already use: "What else could this do that it was not designed for?"
The Adjacent Possible, Made Practical
Related concerns
- Cross Domain Innovation
Regularly study a field entirely outside your domain and ask what it could teach yours.
Intentional field-crossing
- 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.
- Field Crossing Innovation
Test cross-domain ideas quickly and cheaply before investing in them fully.
Run low-cost experiments on intersectional ideas
- Outsider Perspective Innovation
The outside view, a concept Kahneman developed with Amos Tversky, means stepping back from the specifics of your situation and asking: how did things like this tend to go in the past? It reliably corrects the optimism bias built into narrative-based (inside-view) planning, and the research base — particularly on planning and forecasting accuracy — is substantial.
Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.