In this section you will find a number of examples of how the Croker Method can be applied.
The Croker Method is particularly useful when you need to innovate something which is organized frequently. Consider, for example, a software company that would like to add some new elements to its annual hackathon. Such events tend to become repetitive since many times the organizers would find it difficult to reinvent every year. Although it is true that online there are myriad resources, sometimes you just need to get the gist of the direction you want to take.
How can we enhance the annual hackathon? Let us apply the steps explained in the How To section.
Step 1,2,3 - Draw the axis, put the context-instance in the middle, and break it down into features
The first things we need to do is to start breaking down the subject into its important features. Different people can apply different methodologies to find these features. In essence, however, we need to ask the following question: What are those features that define the annual hackathon?
For the sake of this example we've listed the following features:
- Competition
- Teams
- Teamwork
- Code
- Short period of time
We will then use these features to identify a potential scenario analogous to the current-context.
Step 4 - Find a parallel context
Next thing to do is to find a paralle context, a.k.a. an analogy. There are many paths we can take from the features identified earlier. Using the features Competition, Teams, Teamwork, and Short period of time we can match the current context of a Hackathon to that of a Football Tournament, as you can see below.
Now, of course, we couldn't apply all feature from the original context-instance. At the same time we also managed to identify other features which a Football Tournament has, that can maybe enrich already the current-context.
But really, we want to go big. So we will be scaling up the analogy so that we can get some more ideas.
Step 5 - Scale up
What is a scaled up version of Football Tournament? First thing that came to mind was perhaps the obvious: the World Cup! The World Cup is essentially a football tournament, but comes with a big number of extras. *What are the features that make the World Cup a bigger version of the Football Tournament?
As you can see in the image above we can start identifying some good features, mainly:
- Prize money
- International
- K/O Phase
- Live coverage
- Commentary
- Betting
- Collectibles
- Live audience
What will follow?
Now, let's take the features we came up with on the scaled up analogy and bring them to our current context-instance. The following is maybe how the exercise on innovating the annual hackathon be concluded:
- Prize money - we already do that
- International - what if we can invite some of our foreign partners to participate?
- K/O Phase - this is cool, we can make a build up with different topics, and every round will eliminate some teams. We can also put milestones at every 3 hours, and those who don't reach them will be eliminated.
- Live coverage - we can broadcast hot instances of the hackathon using Facebook live! Even more so, we can actually encourage the teams to open up to the public the "locker-room talk" while they are putting their genious at work!
- Commentary - this is difficult in the hackathon context.
- Betting - no.
- Collectibles - we can print some memorabilias for the event: keychains, pendrives, t-shirts, hats - yes this is absolutely cool!
- Live audience - not really what engineers would like while they are working.
The Croker Method is aimed at harnessing the power of analogies. The following are some areas in which analogies can be helpful.
- Explaining a Complex Knowledge Items - particularly useful to generate induction material for complex engines in engineering setups. Many times newcomers will struggle most with knowledge intrinsic to the company (possibly long-serving) employees. Making it even worse, those employees who are expected to share their intrinsic knowledge will find it very hard to explain "the obvious". Analogies can be an extremely effective tool to explain the high-level concepts.
- Education - analogies map complexity to a domain which one could better relate to. This is particularly handy when trying to communicate new concepts to students.
- Revising Complicatedness - analogies will help you re-think what you have already done, and many times the more complex the ideas and concepts get the more reluctant we are to refine their implementation. By mapping concepts as suggested by this method you may be in a better position to question implementation decisions.
- Innovating Products - similar to innovating events, analogies can be very effective tools in the hands of Product Managers and Intrapreneurs who would want to find some hidden value in their products, or would want to add that something extra from what their competitors would be offering.