Cross-industry analogues
Borrows a move from an industry that solved a structurally similar problem. The best source of genuinely different options, because your sector's answers all look the same for a reason.
The printable canvas and the handoff into Claude Code are part of a paid plan. See what a plan includes. It needs the Claude desktop app on this machine, and your team and the prompt library already installed in that project — we cannot see your disk, so open it there.
What it is
A deliberate search for businesses in unrelated industries that have faced the same structural problem, and an examination of what they did about it. It is the most reliable route to options that do not already exist in your sector, because sector norms are shared and therefore rarely differentiating.
- The abstraction
- The problem restated without industry language, in terms of structure and behaviour. This is the search key and the hardest part.
- Candidate industries
- Sectors with the same structural shape, deliberately chosen for being unlike yours. Similar industries produce similar answers, which is the thing you are trying to escape.
- The mechanism
- Why the analogue's move worked — the economics or behaviour it exploited. Without this you are copying a result rather than importing an idea.
- Translation
- What the equivalent would concretely be in your business, named specifically enough to be argued about.
- The blocking constraint
- What in your sector might make it impossible — regulation, safety, capital, contracts. Sometimes real, and surprisingly often just convention.
How you run it
- Abstract the problem out of your sector"We sell through intermediaries who now compete with us" is transferable. "Merchants are stocking own-label" is not. The abstraction is what unlocks the search.
- Find industries with the same structureWho else has your shape of problem? Channel conflict, long replacement cycles, fragmented demand, regulated pricing — these recur across completely unrelated sectors.
- Understand the mechanism, not the surfaceCopying what a company did is cargo cult. Work out why it worked — what economics or behaviour it exploited — and check whether that holds for you.
- Translate deliberatelyState what the equivalent move looks like in your business, concretely. This is where most analogues quietly stop being useful.
- Test the constraint that makes you differentRegulation, safety, capital intensity, contract terms. Usually there is one real reason your sector has not done it, and occasionally there is not.
The prompt
Run this tool in your own Claude
The short prompt starts your partner against the library on your disk. The long one carries everything with it and needs nothing installed.
Your playbook
It lands in the earliest stage this tool suits. Move it on the Playbook page.
You’ll need
- The structural problem stated abstractly, not in sector language
- Curiosity about industries unlike yours
- Someone to check the constraint before you get excited
You’ll end up with
- Three or four analogues with the mechanism explained
- What the equivalent would be in your business
- What breaks in translation