Your best ideas are in the industry next door.

Most industries solve the same problems in different costumes. Scheduling, pricing, onboarding, trust, retention, escalation. The vocabulary changes, the underlying problem does not.

We solved a nasty onboarding problem by copying a technique from a completely different field: the way hospitals handle patient intake. The insight was that you do not ask for everything upfront. You ask for the minimum needed to start, and collect the rest as it becomes relevant. We applied that to our signup flow and cut completion time in half.

The best ideas rarely come from direct competitors, because competitors are all making the same assumptions. They come from adjacent fields that have already been forced to solve a version of your problem under different constraints.

Where have you found an idea outside your own industry that actually worked?