**3.1 Definition and purpose**

The Biology of Creativity (BoC) model is an internationally acclaimed process of innovation and creativity that makes use of reference texts originated essentially from biology to perform critical analogic thinking. This model has been implemented and tested worldwide through a set of workshops in various contexts, such as educational and corporate programs. The underlined provocation follows the question: What we ought to know about design if we only know and stay within the design field?

Therefore, the purpose of the BoC model is to facilitate the relationships between different areas of knowledge by the meaning of straightforward abstractions that will interact among themselves, creating a fertile ground for creativity and innovation to happen in a multitude of contexts [25]. This way the BoC model produces abstractions that allow the better comprehension of dissimilar phenomena. The resulting descriptive equation occurs from their detected similarities. The ultimate goal is to empower the creative and innovative processes of people and organisations, irrespective of their *modus operandi*, allowing a healthier and necessary maturation period in order to achieve a more complete productivity.

### **3.2 The BoC model process**

One word is worth more than a thousand images. The interaction between texts is a relevant form of comprehension of psychological, social, and economic phenomena [26, 27]. Each text, paragraph, word, and each element gathered from a group of texts form a coherent content that originates a collective and multiple entity that evolves and renews itself into new, different, and unexpected perspective-dependent configurations. Therefore, the comprehension of texts is a powerful and simple method to create an ever-renovated movement of comprehension.

In physics, anisotropy is usually defined by a body's responsive behaviour when stimulated to act in different spatial directions [28, 29]. Thus, the same can be assumed when an array of discrepant perspectives (that may be related to modern trends, music, arts, or even to scientific fields) are applied to the comprehension of texts. This event creates an uncomfortable perception that generates curiosity, reflection and, potentially, innovation and creativity.

The incorporation of a single new element creates a disequilibrium due to the non-stable character of the properties that are originated from the comprehension of a group of texts. Such disequilibrium is not trivial and encompasses the basic notion of resiliency happening throughout the learning process, which may be defined by the interchange of equilibrium and disequilibrium states [28, 30].

According to literature, there are several benefits of using design-by-analogy models. They are mostly related to the novelty of ideas, and they were defined as the 'threshold of open goals' (keeping the original goals in the short-term memory while performing analogical thinking), 'narrowed scope of design space' (through the design fixation problem), 'full functionality points to (holistic) system level of design, limited functionality points to limited scope of problem' (by addressing the big picture of the design problem), 'difficulty in mapping narrow functionality' (allowing a better comprehension through the use of less functional analogies), 'more functionality equals to more opportunity for analogical transfer', and 'potential sweeter spot in level of functionality' (through the combinatorial effect of the analyses) [31]. Although, these assumptions were not directly addressed in the BoC model. The intention of the BoC model was to simplify the analogical effort of the participants by making use of a stepwise process with facilitating tools to expand and improve the fluidity of creativity and innovation processes, taking advantage of reference texts mainly sourced from the biological sciences.
