Analogy in business. Ford Motor Company and Apple examples

Analogies fill our life, but we are so accustomed to them that we do not notice it. Once the phrase "desktop" meant only the actual table where the person works, and now it is just associated with the computer. Analogies help to take another look at things and find a solution where no one would look for him. Here are two stories of world famous Ford and Apple, which owe their increasing ability to draw analogies.

According to John Pollack, author of Bill Clinton's speeches and books the Shortcut, foolish not to use such a powerful tool as an analogy. Pollack believes that "instinct analogy" - the ability to see that some things are similar to the other - is the basis of innovation and sales.

Analogy - it is the living flesh of any business.

From car Ford Model T to a Macintosh computer - all these innovations owe their existence analogies. But before we tell stories well-known companies, let's see, what do you want an analogy.

Transform alien and strange to the familiar

Here is a good definition of Pollack:

Analogy - the comparison subjects, which suggests the existence of any common features between them, hidden or obvious.

Analogs can take many forms. Analog may be one word, and maybe the whole story, especially if it has a moral, rousing the audience to some abstract principle.

We use the analogy to use the information coming from the external world, to make a decision. We get new data, compare it with what we already know, are looking to simplify and try to draw conclusions based on their own experience.

John Pollack

In other words, we use an analogy to simplify the alien and unusual objects found in them similar features with familiar objects to us and used for other purposes.

So we are all in some degree conceivable analogies. But some business genius reached unprecedented heights is due to the strong momentum of analogies.

About Ford and meat

In 1913, Ford Motor Company is an ambitious company with a decade of experience, but at the time it has practically no effect on the lives of Americans.

The company has a great purpose - to produce two hundred engines per day, but the production process is not allowed to do it. While the workers were getting all engine components from different rooms and they rolled the carts.

Then one day Bill clan, the Ford employee, past employee of the tram company, forge, machine shop and shipbuilding, went on an excursion to a slaughterhouse in Chicago.

There he saw how you can increase productivity by automation: Carcasses moved through the pipeline in the suspended trolleys and butchers to perform certain tasks, as carcasses are received.

While clans watched this bloody symphony movement, he compared razdelyvanie carcasses with the assembly of engines. Clan realized that by moving the assembly line at the Ford plant, you can speed up production and reduce the price of the goods.

After returning Clan proposed this idea to his boss: "If they can kill the pigs so we can just collect the car."

First, his boss did not agree. What could be more distant from each other than flesh and mechanisms? But clan insisted that it was the same thing.

As a result, the idea embodied the clan, adding to shop moving assembly lines. Due to this, the productivity has increased significantly, and entered the market more affordable model "T» (Model T). Price reduced from 575 to 280 dollars, and the Ford Motor Company in a few years has doubled its market share.

Clan saw an analogy through the superficial differences between the two industries - butchering and assembly machines. At the heart of both processes is the expectation of the material before it is used.

John Pollack

After the success of Ford it was not long before other companies started to introduce conveyors and make high profits in almost all areas.

Steve Jobs - the master of analogy

Analogy work, because they make the familiar unfamiliar, helps the mind focus on unfamiliar terrain, making it similar to the one area that we already know.

In this regard, Steve Jobs's obsession with user-friendly interface was dictated precisely by analogies. Apple has been able to gain public recognition, making the virtual world, unknown users, similar to the physical world in which all are well oriented.

One of the main similarities Apple - the computer desktop - so common that we forget that it is an analogy. She needed to get people to use the Macintosh graphical interface is as simple as they used to be something real and familiar - a physical table.

You can write something on paper to preserve written and later read it, and the same can be done in an electronic document. In reality, you can store documents and photos in a folder, and the same can be done in a folder on the desktop.

You can move the folder to the desktop - you can order them on the computer. What you see on the computer screen matches what you know in real life.

Now these analogies have become so obvious and familiar to us that such an analysis can bring a smile. But in 1984, it was not so. And the instinct of analogies Steve Jobs has become the main reason for the success of Apple.

How to get more out of analogies

If you do not have the instinct of analogies, it is possible to develop it yourself. Analogies can be found everywhere, and you can work out, for example, while reading articles.

Indeed it is important to pay attention to the language that we use. The ability to bring the familiar and the familiar concept - is an important part of the art of analogies.

John Pollack

Another way is pumping in analog - to train to notice the matching items, and for this you need to constantly enrich their experience. Most likely, the clan saw a correspondence between the production of meat and engines because before he had to work in different areas of the industry and did not see much difference between many processes production.

Explore more reading, traveling - increasing our own experience, as well as applying the experience of the people with whom you work, you can become a master of analogy.

The most unusual and creative solutions are born due to mixing of different sources of information. The more detalek of Lego you have, the more opportunities to create something new and incredible.

And you use the analogy in their business?