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# What if
- URL: https://www.cesarrg.com/what-if/
- Published: 2021-07-23T01:41:34.000Z
- Updated: 2023-07-17T06:33:43.000Z
- Author: César Rodríguez
- Tags: Innovation

#17 - Jul.2021

Ideas novelty is less common than you think. Most innovations are iterations of reframing the problem and building on top of existing solutions. And that's ok - innovation should be more about value-driven solutions than just original ideas. 

Back in the '40s, [Genrich Altshuller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genrich%5FAltshuller?ref=cesarrg.com) saw this trend in engineering: by reviewing thousands of patents across several fields he connected the dots between a few core principles shared by all solutions (a total of [40 principles!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ?ref=cesarrg.com)). In other words, most *inventions* were iterations of solutions from other fields.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/10/f4/10f4a52f-1b7d-4284-b66d-0fccfd9dc5da/content/images/2021/07/WhatIf.png)

And this is a powerful mental model. Removing the boundaries of the industry you work on while exploring solutions is a key aspect of diverging thinking for discovering new approaches. [Abstraction](https://www.cesarrg.com/abstraction/) and analogies can sometimes lead you towards the piece of the puzzle that you're looking for. 

Here's a simple exercise that I learned some years ago when studying Service Design: when exploring solutions, choose a company that you admire from a *totally* different industry (say you work in food services - so you choose a company in tech or automotive). Then ask yourself this question: "**What if* \[Company\]*were to enter my industry? how they might solve this problem?". This cross-field thinking can get you into very wild brainstorming sessions - connecting core principles used by other successful companies from very different industries can get you to insightful findings. 

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/10/f4/10f4a52f-1b7d-4284-b66d-0fccfd9dc5da/content/images/2022/12/sign_CRG2.png)

💡

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