The similarity heuristic is very easy to observe in the world of business, both from a marketing standpoint and from the position of the consumer.
For example, companies will often advertise their services as something similar to a successful competitor, but better — such a concept is evident in the motion picture industry.
The OEM realizes they can produce the same part less expensively and with possibly greater profit, if they do not adhere to all or most of the OE design specifications.
Initial showing of the NES were met poorly — clearly, a similarity heuristic was in place, and people had created biases against anything relating to interactive television gaming.
Employing a dissimilarity heuristic, Nintendo managed to create enough of a gap from the former video game industry and market a successful product.
The Human Resource rounds of job interviews often focus on educational background and experiences of candidates that can qualify them for similarity or dissimilarity with the employees promoted within the company.
[1] It's argued, implicitly, that kids of alumni will often find themselves in the company of other similarly situated family friends, and hence be more likely to be successful themselves.
By comparing these symptoms with those of previously corrected software flaws, a developer is able to determine the most probable cause and take an effective course of action.
Over time, a developer’s past experiences will allow their use of the similarity heuristic to be highly effective, quickly choosing the debugging approach that will likely reveal the problem’s source.