The Hidden Network: How Industry-Adjacent Connections Drive Innovation
Why your next breakthrough might come from a conversation with someone who has no idea what you do.
When Reed Hastings was building Netflix's recommendation engine in the early 2000s, he didn't turn to other media companies for inspiration. Instead, his team studied collaborative filtering techniques from academic research and e-commerce platforms. The result? An algorithm that could predict viewing preferences better than traditional entertainment industry wisdom ever could.
This is the power of industry-adjacent connections and it's the most underutilised innovation strategy in business today. In this article, I follow on from my last article The Compound Effect of Weak Ties to delve deeper into why these weak ties can be so powerful and why building that network can put your business or career on a new plane.
The Innovation Blind Spot
Most professionals suffer from what psychologists call "functional fixedness": the inability to see beyond the conventional uses of tools, processes, or ideas within their domain. We network with people who speak our language, attend conferences filled with our peers, and read publications that reinforce our industry's accepted wisdom.
This creates an innovation blind spot. While we're incrementally improving solutions that everyone in our field knows about, breakthrough innovations are often happening in completely different sectors. The problem isn't that we lack creativity; it's that we lack exposure to how other industries have already solved similar challenges.
Pattern Recognition Across Domains
The most innovative companies have learned to see patterns across industry boundaries. Amazon didn't invent logistics optimisation; they borrowed it from manufacturing and applied it to e-commerce. Uber didn't create dynamic pricing; they adapted it from the airline industry. Tesla's direct-sales model came from studying how premium brands like Apple controlled their customer experience.
These weren't accidents. They were the result of leaders who cultivated relationships and gathered insights from adjacent industries that faced similar core challenges but had developed different solutions.
The key is spotting that industries are essentially different expressions of the same underlying business fundamentals:
Trust and credibility: How do luxury brands, medical device companies, and cybersecurity firms each build credibility with skeptical audiences? Each has developed sophisticated approaches that could transform how a struggling startup establishes market credibility.
Complex system optimisation: Airlines optimise routes and schedules, hospitals optimise patient flow, and manufacturers optimise production lines. The principles underlying each optimisation could revolutionise operations in unrelated fields.
Behaviour change: Gaming companies excel at creating engagement loops, fitness apps master habit formation, and educational platforms specialise in knowledge retention. These behavioural insights could transform how any industry approaches user adoption.
Scaling challenges: How does a restaurant chain maintain quality across thousands of locations? How does a consulting firm preserve culture while growing rapidly? How does a software company scale customer support? The solutions developed in each context offer templates for similar challenges elsewhere.
The Translation Layer
Developing the ability to translate solutions from one context to another is key component in going from good to great. It requires a specific type of pattern recognition that looks beyond surface differences to identify underlying structures.
Start by mapping core challenges to fundamental business problems rather than industry-specific issues. Instead of thinking "we need better customer onboarding for our SaaS platform," reframe it as "we need to help people adopt new behaviours and build confidence with an unfamiliar system." Suddenly, your potential learning sources expand from other SaaS companies to include fitness apps, educational platforms, gaming companies, and even rehabilitation programs.
If you're solving for user trust: Connect with professionals in cybersecurity, healthcare, financial services, luxury goods, or any industry where credibility is paramount.
If you're optimising complex operations: Learn from airlines, hospitals, manufacturing, logistics, urban planning, or military operations.
If you're driving behaviour change: Study gaming, education, fitness, therapy, marketing, or social movements.
If you're scaling quality: Examine restaurant chains, consulting firms, educational institutions, or any business that maintains standards across multiple locations or teams.
The goal isn't to copy solutions directly, but to understand the principles and adapt them to your context.
Cross-Pollination in Action
Some of the most transformative innovations have come from these unexpected connections:
Biomimicry in engineering: The Japanese bullet train's nose design came from studying kingfisher beaks. Velcro was inspired by burr seeds. Sharkskin patterns now optimise swimsuits and reduce drag on aircraft. Engineers who studied biology revolutionised their field.
Game mechanics in education: Duolingo transformed language learning by applying gaming principles like streak counts, achievement badges, and progressive difficulty levels. The founder's background in computer science and gaming, not traditional education, enabled this breakthrough.
Manufacturing principles in software: Toyota's lean manufacturing principles became the foundation for agile software development. The translation from physical production to digital product development revolutionised how technology companies operate.
Hospitality insights in healthcare: The Cleveland Clinic transformed patient experience by studying luxury hotels. They realised that medical expertise alone wasn't enough—the service design principles that make guests feel valued in hospitality could make patients feel more comfortable and confident in healthcare settings.
Military strategy in business: Many successful business strategies originated in military thinking. The concept of competitive advantage came from military strategy. Project management methodologies were adapted from military operations. Supply chain resilience principles were borrowed from logistics in warfare.
Building Your Adjacent Network
Creating these cross-industry connections requires intentional relationship building beyond your usual professional circles.
Target complementary challenges: Identify industries that face similar core problems but with different constraints. If you're in healthcare struggling with user compliance, connect with professionals in fitness, education, or behavioural economics who've mastered motivation and habit formation.
Attend cross-functional events: Instead of just going to your industry's conferences, seek out events that bring together diverse professionals. Startup accelerator demo days, innovation summits, TEDx events, and general business networking groups often attract people from multiple industries.
Join problem-focused communities: Online communities organised around specific challenges rather than industries can be goldmines for adjacent insights. Communities focused on growth, operations, user experience, or leadership attract professionals from all sectors who share common challenges.
Embrace the learning mindset: When you meet someone from a different industry, resist the urge to immediately explain why their approach wouldn't work in your field. Instead, ask deeper questions about their methods and reasoning. The goal is to understand principles, not just tactics.
Follow your curiosity: That article about supply chain innovation might seem irrelevant to your software career until you realise that many of their efficiency principles could transform your development pipeline. Read outside your industry. Attend talks on topics that seem tangentially related.
Build translation skills: Practice explaining your industry's challenges in universal business terms rather than industry jargon. This makes it easier for people from other fields to offer insights and for you to recognise relevant solutions from their industries.
The most valuable people in your network aren't necessarily the most senior in your industry; they're the connectors who can bridge different worlds and help you see familiar problems through unfamiliar lenses.
Innovation rarely happens in isolation. It emerges at the intersection of different ideas, approaches, and perspectives. By building connections across industry boundaries, you're not just expanding your network; you're expanding your capacity for breakthrough thinking.
Your next innovation might be waiting in a conversation with someone who's never heard of your industry but has already solved your biggest challenge in a completely different context.