INSPIRING QUOTE

The Genius Hidden in Distant Domains

We tend to think creativity demands thinking harder. In truth, it demands thinking farther.

Who doesn’t find the Doritos Locos Taco yummy? It fuses junk-food flavor science with brand marketing. Or how about how entertaining Hamilton was by bringing hip-hop and history to Broadway?

Every creative act begins at the bottom of the analogy ladder where comparisons are comfortable and predictable. But true invention happens when you climb higher, when the rungs grow shaky and the view expands. From that higher rung, new patterns appear. The most original ideas live there, connecting domains that rarely touch. An analogy isn’t just a logical or cute comparison; it’s a mental bridge that maps structural relationships, not surface details.

Saying “the brain is like a city” isn’t about shape, it’s about how traffic and thoughts both flow through networks.

At its core, a far analogy is an act of associative thinking, connecting concepts that rarely meet, revealing hidden relationships between distant worlds.

Near analogies help refine or explain an existing concept. The farther the analogy, the more cognitive distance you introduce, which increases both novelty and, unfortunately, the interpretive difficulty. True creativity often lies at the edge of medium-to-far distance: distant enough to surprise, close enough to make sense.

CREATIVITY SPOTLIGHT

The Burrs That Stuck

In 1941, a Swiss engineer named George de Mestral took his dog for a walk in the Alps. When they returned, he noticed something small but relentless. Burrs clung to his dog’s fur and his wool pants. Most people would have brushed them off. De Mestral, instead, got curious.

He plucked a burr, put it under his microscope, and discovered hundreds of tiny hooks gripping into the loops of the fabric. That microscopic moment sparked a macroscopic idea: What if this natural mechanism could be recreated as a fastening system?

💡 Challenges of Combining Distant Concepts

It would take more than a decade of trial and error via experimenting with cotton, polyester, and finally nylon before he arrived at the material that could form tiny, flexible hooks. But during this process, when de Mestral took his idea to experts in Lyon, France, then a global center for weaving, many doubted the potential of his idea. Some even called it “stupid.”

In 1955, he patented his invention: Velcro, a name derived from French words velour and crochet, meaning “velvet hook.”

💡 Great Discoveries Often Don’t Have a Eureka Moment

What makes this story timeless isn’t just the “aha!” moment. It’s where the connection came from. De Mestral didn’t innovate within the world of clothing or buttons or zippers. His breakthrough came from looking outside his domain, from biology, not fashion.

That’s the essence of a far analogy: mapping relationships between distant worlds that share underlying structure. Burrs and fabric aren’t visually similar, but the interaction of their hooks and loops mirror the relational logic of fastening. De Mestral climbed high on the analogy ladder and found rungs no one else could see.

💡 Connect the Unconnected

Velcro’s story reminds us that creativity often hides in the mundane; in the lint, the weeds, the unnoticed friction of everyday life. When we slow down enough to ask, “What else works like this?”, we give our imagination new raw material to recombine.

FRAMEWORKS IN FOCUS

The Four Pillars of Creative Thinking

Associative thinking powers the second pillar, and is the mental bridge between the other three pillars.

• Explore with curiosity and flexibility.

• Combine what you explore in novel ways.

• Diverge through independent, unconventional thinking.

• Emerge by conjuring something new from the mix.

BLINKS, THINKS & LINKS

Curiosity Candy

• Interactive library showing how designers and engineers learn from nature.
  

• Video visualizing scale shifts from picnic blanket to the cosmos.
  

• Explores how metaphors shape human understanding through movement and visual analogies.

ACTIONABLE PROMPTS

Your Velcro Moment

Creativity research shows that generating solutions for "distant" analogies (those comparing things in different domains) promotes relational thinking and creative problem-solving. When you practice making these creative comparisons, you train your mind to think more flexibly, which can help you solve seemingly unrelated problems later on.

This week, practice curiosity through friction.

1️⃣ Notice one thing that annoys or fascinates you; something sticky, tangled, repetitive, or oddly designed.

2️⃣ Ask: What else works like this? Don’t stay in the same field. Look to nature, art, sports, code, architecture, or anywhere.

3️⃣ Sketch or jot the analogy. How could the structure, not the surface, transfer to your problem or project?

Thanks for reading,

V.C. Hanna
Founder, Kreatio