A review of John Pollack’s ‘Shortcut: How analogies reveal connections, spark innovation, and sell our greatest ideas’
by James Forr
In 1941 an engineer named George de Mestral took his dog on a hunting expedition in the Alps and returned home with his socks covered in tiny burrs. As he painstakingly plucked out the burrs his engineer’s curiosity took over. Why were these things so blessedly difficult to remove?
Out came the microscope. As de Mestral focused in he noticed that the burrs were adorned with something akin to little hooks that burrowed their way into the fabric of the sock. And with that came an idea — what if we could use similar hooks to bind fabric together?
Fourteen years later, after much trial and error in the laboratory, de Mestral was awarded the patent for his new invention — Velcro.
Humans’ unique ability to think metaphorically — and the way metaphors help us communicate and innovate — is the topic of John Pollack’s new book, Shortcut: How Analogies Reveal Connections, Spark Innovation, and Sell Our Greatest Ideas (Penguin Publishing Group, 2015).
We often think of metaphors as being primarily the domain of writers, artists, and great speechmakers; however, all humans think metaphorically. As Pollack argues, if we didn’t think metaphorically we wouldn’t be able to do something as simple as interpret a map, which is essentially a two-dimensional metaphor for a three-dimensional space. We also would struggle to communicate about even the most basic subjects. How would we have a discussion about time, for instance, if we couldn’t use or understand phrases like “We are running out of time” or “The year 2015 is behind us”?
Pollack proposes that an effective metaphor does five things:
• Uses the familiar to explain the less familiar
• Highlights similarities while obscuring differences
• Identifies useful abstractions
• Tells a coherent story
• Resonates emotionally
In our work at Olson Zaltman we are sometimes asked by clients whether metaphor is relevant in new product development; however, as Pollack points out, it is nearly impossible to innovate without using analogic thinking, although researchers, inventors, and developers often don’t realize in hindsight the role that metaphor played in helping them achieve their breakthrough ideas. In order to create something new, you must model your work on something old, even if the two things being compared are ostensibly quite distant from each other, like burrs and Velcro. Henry Ford’s concept of the assembly line didn’t spring spontaneously from the mind of Mr. Ford as a divine revelation. Rather, the idea came from one of his unsung engineers, who studied butchers at a meat packing plant as they systematically disassembled the carcasses of pigs that moved along on an overhead trolley. What was a sensible method for chopping apart a carcass suddenly seemed like an equally sensible method for piecing together a car.
What was a sensible method for chopping apart a carcass suddenly seemed like an equally sensible method for piecing together a car.
Sometimes you can be looking at the right metaphor but in the wrong way. For centuries would-be inventors studied birds, looking for the inspiration that would make it possible to build a flying machine. Most of those dreamers focused on how birds flapped their wings. It wasn’t until 1799 that George Cayley discovered that they key to staying aloft wasn’t just how birds flapped their wings but also how they banked and glided. That insight transformed human flight from whimsical fantasy to achievable reality.
We also use metaphor to influence people’s opinions. An effective metaphor can seem quite simple on the surface while unconsciously conveying a complex set of meanings and associations. When John Roberts was nominated to the United States Supreme Court, he described the role of a justice as akin to a baseball umpire. “My job is to call balls or strikes,” Roberts proclaimed, “not to pitch or bat.” Pollack says Roberts’ metaphor was brilliant in that it suggested impartiality and fairness. Thanks to the cultural associations that Americans have with baseball, it probably also transmitted a quiet but important signal about tradition and patriotism. However, the metaphor was, to be charitable, an oversimplification. A less charitable person might say it was outright wrong. Unlike the rules of baseball, the Constitution is awash in vast gray areas. If that were not the case the truth would be self-evident and all Supreme Court rulings would be unanimous 9–0 verdicts. The stark political schisms that have eternally divided the Court testify to the fact that the meaning of the Constitution is very much in the eye of the beholder.
Nonetheless, Pollack contends that whether a metaphor is true or false is nearly irrelevant. What matters most is that the metaphor is a good one and that you say it first. Once a metaphor is established, it frames people’s thinking, and once that frame is established it is very difficult to dislodge. Ford, which benefited so much from metaphor when it created the assembly line, was the victim of metaphor when it introduced its much anticipated Edsel model in the 1950s. Ford boasted of the Edsel’s “continental flair,” which is weak metaphor because it doesn’t call to mind a specific image or spark much emotion. Consumers, however, saw the Edsel and had a different observation — that its front grille bore an unfortunate resemblance to a toilet seat. That metaphor triggered lots of emotions, but obviously not the right ones. The Edsel and its “continental flair” never stood a chance.
Pollack is a bit of a Renaissance man — foreign correspondent, political speechwriter, field assistant in Antarctica, strolling violinist– with an eclectic set of interests. Two of his previous books have dealt with the evolution of the pun and his lifelong quest to build a seaworthy boat entirely out of wine corks. But by no means is Shortcut a frivolous work. It builds on the seminal work of academics such as George Lakoff and Dedre Gentner and offers easily accessible examples of how the metaphors that we encounter influence us every day, and how we can systematically use metaphor to our advantage.
James Forr is a Director at Olson Zaltman
