NM method by Nakayama Masakazu uses analogies actively. For example, when thinking about “to raise sales,” first focus on the verb “raise” and ask “raise like what?” Let you answered, “raise like the kite.” You found an analogy between sales and kite. (*23)
Next, You think what happens in the metaphor space with the kite. For example, kite falls as the wind ceases. Finally, you think what corresponds to “kite falls down as the wind ceases” in the original space with the sales.
When the market gets attention, sales will rise, but when they lose attention, sales will decrease. In this corresponding, you found another analogy: “attention to the market = wind.”
The idea further develops.
- “But sometimes kites ever fly even if the wind stops. Why doesn’t it fall?”
- “Even if the wind near the ground stops, the wind keeps blowing over the sky.”
- “What does correspond with it in the original space?”
- “If the sales rise more than a certain amount, the sales themselves create the attention.”
The fragments of the idea are not objective. However, creation is subjective. Useful ideas will be born after you born those fragments of ideas.
The NM method tries to bring out new ideas for the task in the following four steps.
- ❶ Choose keywords from tasks
- ❷ Map keywords to the metaphor space with analogies
- ❸ Develop imagination in metaphor space by association
- ❹ Pull back results into task space with analogies
It is similar to the correspondence between vectors and complex numbers. In high school mathematics, you may learn mapping vectors to complex numbers, multiplying in complex numbers space, and convert new complex numbers to vector again. Multiplication in a complex number space corresponds to the rotation of vectors.
Easiness of operation differs depending on spaces. In high school mathematics, it was easier to multiply complex numbers than to rotate vectors. For the creation of ideas, concrete metaphor space is easier to develop by association than space of abstract concepts. It is because you can use past experiences in your life.
Let’s imagine people who do not know kites. By hearing the metaphor, “raise sales like a kite,” they can not create a new idea. They do not have experiences of kites. The analogy is a subjective tool to create ideas from the individual past experience.
*23 Recap: James Webb Young thought the idea was a new combination of existing elements, and the ability to combine depends on the ability to find the relevance of things.
*24 In my opinion, “attention to the market” is an abstract concept. So I would like to convert it a physical sensation or a metaphor. However, it looks too much for the topic of this chapter, so that’s the end of the story.