Your question immediately made me think of G. Polya's classic book (and research) from 1945 "How to solve it", which devotes a large part to the question "Here

Your question immediately made me think of G. Polya's classic book (and research) from 1945 "How to solve it", which devotes a large part to the question "Here is a problem related to yours and solved before. Could you use it?" A small excerpt: "… We have to look around for closely related problems; we look at the unknown, or we look for a formerly solved problem which is linked to our present one by Generalization, Specialization, or Analogy"