Questions for you:
- When did I last deliberately juxtapose unrelated concepts to generate new insights, how did that go?
- What would happen if I forced connections between my current problem and something completely unrelated?
- Rather than forcing random connections, how can I look for unexpected metaphors to something I’m describing or creating?
- Do I allow enough time for unexpected associations to form, or am I always pursuing direct solutions and literal comparisons?
Organisational applications:
Cross-functional collision workshops:
Deliberately combine employees from apparently incompatible domains to solve problems neither would normally address. Don’t just mix sales and engineering—have actuaries ask designers about their processes, compliance specialists ask marketing creatives how to sell an idea, logistics coordinators rethink their distribution networks with brand strategists. Like using Cash’s weathered voice and traditional sound in a context where industrial electronics were so familiar, the disparate perspectives will generate a new insight either group would struggle to produce independently.
Analogical problem-solving protocols:
When teams encounter intractable problems, mandate exploration of solutions from seemingly unrelated but analogically similar domains. How would maritime shipping handle this scheduling conflict? What could hospital emergency departments teach us about customer queue management? How might theatrical lighting design inform our data visualisation challenge? Like Eisenstein’s tertium quid, placing the problem alongside currently unrelated solutions creates emergent approaches that direct analysis misses. The key is to select domains that are sufficiently different to generate surprise but sufficiently related to support useful mappings, and trusting that you can find those analogies if you just keep searching.
Strategic metaphor development:
Rather than literal mission statements, experiment with organisational metaphors combining unlike concepts to crystallise strategic direction. “We’re a library disguised as a coffee shop” or “a manufacturing plant operating like improvisational theatre” forces concrete thinking about identity that abstract values statements don’t achieve. Effective metaphors make strategy tangible by juxtaposing unexpected elements, and the dissonance between combined concepts reveals strategic priorities—what gets emphasised, what gets downplayed. Prototype metaphors with diverse stakeholder groups, observe who is open to new ideas, and who wants to fall back onto trusted but uninspiring associations.
Innovation through category collision:
Systematically explore opportunities at intersections of unrelated product categories or market segments. What happens when you combine luxury goods marketing with industrial equipment sales? Hospitality service models applied to healthcare? Subscription business models for construction equipment? Like unexpected combinations that create new meanings in art, category collisions generate business model innovations that neither domain alone can produce. The technique works because each domain introduces established patterns from foreign domains that appear novel when transferred. Brace yourself for potential failures, and weird combinations, but those adventitious ideas can be a way to break through slow inevitable declines in sales or creativity.
Further reading
On creative combination and juxtaposition:
The Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation by Frans Johansson (Harvard Business School Press, 2006). Examines how breakthrough innovations emerge at intersections of different disciplines, industries, and cultures, with practical frameworks for fostering productive collisions between disparate domains.
A Technique for Producing Ideas by James Webb Young (McGraw-Hill, 1939/2003). Classic advertising text on generating creativity through juxtaposing unrelated concepts, arguing that new ideas emerge from combining existing elements in novel ways rather than pure invention.
Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (University of Chicago Press, 1980). Foundational work on how metaphors shape thought by combining unlike concepts, revealing how much of cognition depends on mapping patterns from one domain to another.
The video game Rimworld is an interesting example of this phenomenon. While not quite tying unrelated ideas together, it does give the player control of various simulated systems, but leaves the player to add their own story. You can watch a good summary of that intention, and the development process, here on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGtUjTM6hd0; or the developer’s presentation at the CDC conference here: watch
On Eisenstein and montage theory:
Film Form: Essays in Film Theory by Sergei Eisenstein (Harcourt, 1949). Eisenstein’s own writing on montage and tertium quid, explaining how juxtaposing film clips creates meanings that exist in neither clip independently, foundational to understanding emergent meaning from combination.
The Technique of Film Editing by Karel Reisz and Gavin Millar (Focal Press, 2nd edition, 1968). Classic text on film editing including detailed examination of montage theory and how sequencing affects meaning, extending Eisenstein’s concepts to practical application.
Understanding Movies by Louis Giannetti (Pearson, 14th edition, 2016). Accessible introduction to film theory including montage and how juxtaposition creates meaning, with contemporary examples demonstrating tertium quid in modern cinema.
On combinatorial creativity:
Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson (Riverhead Books, 2010). Explores how innovation emerges from connecting disparate elements, with historical examples demonstrating that breakthrough ideas typically combine existing concepts rather than appearing fully formed.
Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner (Basic Books, 2002). Cognitive science examination of how minds create meaning by blending concepts from different domains, underlying mechanism for metaphor, analogy, and creative thinking.
The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms by Margaret A. Boden (Routledge, 2nd edition, 2004). Philosophical and psychological exploration of creativity including combinatorial processes, distinguishing between combining familiar elements versus generating genuinely novel concepts.
Interactive exhibit
Try our Juxtaposition Generator to create new, unexpected connections.
https://experiments.randomthebook.com/JuxtapositionGenerator/index.html
About the image
This is one of the handful of LLM-generated images in the book. ChatGPT provided a pretty good response to the request for a man holding a caged bird in silhouette.
Photo montage Matt Ballantine 2026
Random the Book 