Creation happens through analogy and recombination. Uber for x sounds like a corny VC-forced language, but it’s a useful way to think. What if we took what was working here, and applied it there.
That’s why my favorite creators are big remixers. David Chang. Quentin Tarantino. Donald Glover. Home Depot was a remix of Costco applied to hardware stores. Costco and Walmart borrowed relentlessly from Fedmart (in fact, that’s where Walmart got its name.) Joe Coloumbe borrowed relentlessly to create Trader Joe’s.
When Kanye West released Runaway’s music video in 2010, it was a revelation to me. Not just for what was possible in music, but how you could create something new by combining existing ideas in new ways.
But interestingly what works in creation does not work for editing and criticism. I don’t like ideas in the payments space because y tried… I don’t think you can acquire customers in the beauty space because x couldn’t…
In criticism, analogy is a shortcut way of thinking that misses the facts. You need to understand what, specifically, didn’t work last time and exactly why.
The big new ideas are always despite the failed analogies and because of the new ones. That’s what makes them big and new.
Thanks, I like this framing a lot.
It matches a thought I was recently trying to explain to a friend, for how to think about things like Myers-Briggs and other "personality types" systems. Like an analogy, they aren't precise and they don't get into the full detail of reality. As a result, they can be useful to open up unconsidered possibilities and realize that other people experience the world differently from you. But they shouldn't be used to close down possibilities, like "you're an INFP, so you can't work in sales".