Conceptual wanderlust: How to develop creative supply chain theory with analogies

Abstract

AbstractThis article guides the development of creative insights in supply chain management. The authors begin by describing analogies' role in advancing organization theory with a focus on image transfers between knowledge domains. While much has been said about the merits of conceptual transfers between domains, much equally remains unknown, particularly about how to deliberately develop creative insights that have the potential to challenge or enhance existing supply chain management theory. To address this issue, this research builds on prior work on analogies, creativity, and design thinking to develop a heuristic‐analytic model. This model is designed to assist researchers in theorizing by analogy through a controlled dual cognitive process of divergence before convergence combined with a distant boundary‐spanning knowledge search. An illustration of the model shows how creative output can provide a fresh perspective that helps render supply chains potentially more resilient.