If you’re tracking customer purchasing behavior and notice a sudden spike in sales from a particular product or region, that anomaly could represent a new trend or market demand that you can capitalize on
Anomalies
In the United States the defense industry has long focused on building expensive and sophisticated missiles. Even the cheapest offerings cost upward of 100,000 dollars. A veteran upended the status quo; they created a low cost manufacturing facility
Orthodoxy
Are you having unusual success with a specific target segment?
Anomalies
A manager at a financial software company is tasked with creating a new version of the company's popular product for nonprofit organizations. She first volunteered at a local charity and immersed herself in a new context. She realizes the sharp differences between non-profit and profit and was able to brainstorm extra features of the product
Voyage
A Harvard professor created MayDay, a political activist committee to address the issue of corporate money in politics. The site used crowdfunding to attempt to solve seemingly intractable problems
Extremities
What if the reverse was true?
Orthodoxies
A doctor grew tired of uncorking wine bottles that he didn't want to finish in one night and the wine started to oxidize and deteriorate. He knew surgeons used extra-fine needles to perform minimally invasive surgery and tested and developed the idea for wine bottles
Analogy
Teleparty, the ability to watch a show or movie together, but from different locations
Confluence
What can we learn from those who are most intense in their complaints?
Extremities
A man was frustrated that it was so difficult to find a taxis in New York so he created Uber, an app where you can easily order a car
Frustration
A chef is concerned with how much to-go restaurants produce waste from plastic utensils. The chef creates a recipe for edible utensils
Analogies
How do trends intersect?
Confluence