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Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation

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Medici Effect opens slowly and at first I was disappointed: just another book of business successes. But as I began taking notes, I realized Frans Johansson really has a new message for all of us.

I recommend skimming the first chapters to get to the second part of the book, and then going back to understand application of principles. The heart of the book is about the definition of intersectional innovation and the conditions that must exist for breakthroughs to happen -- a combination of individual qualities, environmental support, luck and perseverance.

Perhaps the most helpful, most widely applicable guidelines involve planning for failure and, relatedly, moving from quantity to quality. Prolific authors, artists and business people tend to be successful. They might discard a dozen "bad" ideas to come to two or three successes. So we should reward people for actions, not just success. The only true failure is failure to act.

I also liked Johansson's discussion of risk, especially the notion of "risk homeostasis." If we take risks in one area, we compensate by avoiding risks in another. And a false sense of security can lead to senseless risk-taking.

Johansson's examples make fascinating reader and probably helped sell the book. But I couldn't help thinking that he offers little hope to the majority of people who find themselves in environments where they are forced to specialize. Risk-taking and diversity of experience tend to be discouraged and in fact we tend to disparage what I call the "winding road" career path. Richard Branson is an innovator; on a lesser scale, he'd be a rolling stone.

Johansson emphasizes that underlying diversity, most people have a core competence where they've developed a solid expertise. I think that point has to be addressed, along with the need for a social antenna that allows innovators to find a supportive arena. If you're too maverick, you're dismissed; too conformist, you're not innovating. Where's the balance?

For example, Orit Dagiesh, the Bain consultant, must have paid lots of dues to reach her position. And while Johansson says she defies the consultant stereotype, she does so in a direction that enhances her femininity, with high heels and jewelry. If she'd been more casual or sporty, she might not have been taken seriously. Attractiveness pays, especially for women.

After reading this book, I began to see other examples of intersectional innovation. Natalie Goldberg's first book, Writing Down the Bones, mixed Zen Buddhism with writing.
And Herminia Ibarra's Working Identity argues for creating new networks to make meaningful career changes.

If I were teaching an MBA course in marketing, strategy or product planning, I'd recommend this book. And I'd recommend this book as a gift to anyone interested in business ideas. Those who liked Malcolm Gladwell's book, The TIpping Point (which Johansson discusses) will like The Medici Effect too.

Frans Johansson starts with a great concept: that innovation is most likely to occur at the intersection of multiple fields or areas of interest. He's a good writer and does an admirable job organizing and tying together a number of relevant ideas and examples. The examples are also nicely done - a set of engaging stories which describe - in broad terms -how the innovators who are profiled got started and what they went through to acheive their breakthroughs.

But, beyond the nice examples, which are similar to those found in many other books, there is little that sets this book apart. The idea of crossing over and combining disciplines is not really a new concept and much of the discussion about the creative process is pretty basic. The book's introduction and chapter headings (e.g., "Creating the Medici Effect" and "Making Intersectional Ideas Happen") led me to expect more in-depth insights. But the Medici Effect is lite on the practical and it tends to describe the innovative process in general terms rather than exploring specifics of how it happens. In this sense, it's more inspirational than practical. If you're expecting finer details that you can readily apply, you may also be left wanting more.

For a more hands-on book on innovation, you may want to check out Tom Kelley's "Ten faces of innovation," which is based on Ideo's approach to framing and solving problems.

This is not an academic book. Nonetheless, all should read it, if for no other reason then simply in order to learn why having a broad-based knowledge and curiosity are essential attributes of a person living in the post-modern world.

The pattern of the book is not terribly innovative: good ideas followed by the expected examples of how sterling men and women implemented these concepts in practice and attained an even more sterling level of success. Altogether, very much in style of all other books aimed at predominantly business-oriented readers who, for whatever reason, need the examples set by (successful) luminaries in order to be converted to the creed. A more demanding reader may, upon seeing the same "follow the banality" pattern, reject the little volume as another horrid, trivial, and profoundly intellectually boring "thing." Do NOT do that: it would be a major mistake, and you would miss on a number of really important thoughts.

The book has a powerful message to all members of the academe, corporate executives, human resources operators and gurus. And practically, everyone else, including high school and university students. It should also be one of the most recommended self-help books for all university leaders guilty of having produced more than three generations of super-specialized graduates with very sketchy ideas about the world outside their own field of work. Reading one of the book's chapters every morning before going to work (best over morning coffee, and instead of the sports or cooking page) should be the compulsory task for all human resources executives that may clear their persistent misconception of a "well-defined" (1.e., narrowly specialized) professional path as a clear sign of intellectual prowess and the concomitant ability to create and lead.

For the first time in many, many years an author embarked upon the quest of promoting the concept of a generalist as the pillar of creativity, arguing that broad education and intellectual curiosity, combined with open mind and acceptance of diversity, not as a politically correct and entirely meaningless term, but as the essential constituent of life, are the critical prerogatives for breakthrough innovation. Johansson took upon himself the task of demonstrating the almost desperate need for the return to what universities have largely abandoned: development of minds equipped with broad multi-disciplinary knowledge, and capable of multi-spectral intellectual curiosity and insight instead of the vigorous mass production of bachelor, master, and doctor experts in extraordinarily narrow (to the point of ridicule) sub-fragments of their disciplines of choice.

Indeed, this is not an "academic" book, and maybe it is extraordinarily good that it is so: free from our often irritating academic stuffiness, the book speaks to any reader, independently of his/her level of formal education. It also quite poignantly exposes the deficiencies of today's academic training that often fails to endow graduates with the gift of non-dogmatic and broadely educated mind.

The "Medici Effect" should be read widely, and the underlying notions should be accepted and promoted with persistence. It is a book to which all should return when satisfaction with the currently accepted credo, and the often trivial progress that such dogma typically imposees, become the most attractive attributes of their professional lives.

The title of the book is very grand. However, the content of the book is far inferior to the title. I was expecting the concepts or ideas that would bring about splendors in philosophy, art and science in great magnitudes just like what took place in Renaissance, but instead the author just filled the pages mostly with small and insignificant examples and stories.

This is just a book on creativity. Its significance is not as big as the recent book, "A whole new mind," or older books such as "At work with Edison." It would be much better if the author can focus his study on how Renaissance came about and on how to replicate or recreate the favorable environment and fertile ground for bringing about another Renaissance on a comparable or even greater scale.

The biggest flaw of this book is that even though the main thesis of the book is on many people from single-disciplinary background coming together to create something multidisciplinary, most of the examples in the book are about single individuals having multidisciplinary abilities creating something new and not at all at the scale of the Renaissance. Besides the brain-reading program and the British code-breaking group mentioned in the book, all other examples were single individuals. So, where is the Medici effect of people coming together?

The second flaw of this book is the assumption that when people come together, a Renaissance will happen. The author is asserting that diversity in ethnicity, geography, age, and gender have a greater chance of coming up with unique ideas. This is wrong. What's needed is diversity of expertise, not just diversity. Diversity of mediocrity does not mean increased chance of creativity.

In summary, I am very disappointed in this book. The title shows great promise, but the author couldn't deliver it. There is much work to be done to understand and promote multidisciplinary creativity. This is one of the very few books that touch on this subject. There is much work to be done in this area. And if we want to create a new Renaissance, then the work becomes monumental!

Everyone should read this book. Simply outstanding and feels very fresh. Also very, very useful. Lots of new insights. It's thesis is that we have the greatest chance of coming up with new ideas when we step into an intersection of fields, compared to if we stay within a single field or culture. Talks about why and how. The chapters are short and to the point. Great! They also tie into each other so you are going to want to read the next one, and the next one...

The book is divided into three sections:

1. the first describes the intersection and the forces that are creating intersections between different fields and cultures today. Never knew that Shrek, Shakira and a commodities trader had anything in common.

2. the second shows us how we can develop intersectional ideas. The theory here is very well outlined and well founded and the stories are just amazing. It talks about food, games, VCs, MacGyver, music, the list goes on. Each new chapter gives more detail and useful advice. Lots of aha-moments. Really made me think hard about my projects at work and even my career.

3. the third looks at how we execute intersectional ideas. It shows why executing ideas within fields are different from at the intersection of fields. Love this section. It has perspectives on things like failures, risk-taking and motivation that I haven't heard before. Some of the stuff here was mind-blowing like the section about ants and truck drivers and how we tend to compensate for taking higher risks in one area by taking lower risks in another area.


I liked how the book tied all of the ideas together so neatly and I liked the style of writing. In the Conclusion it goes from a myth about glass, to Corning's optical fibers, to a researcher on a prisoner island in Ecuador, to what motivates us to come up with new ideas, to how we can find intersections. Neat! I recommend this book highly!

In schooling we tend to become more and more specialized, learning more and more about less and less. In this book the concentration is on the intersection between scientific disciplines. How does a study of the foraging behavior of ants lend clues to large-scale business problems like factory scheduling and telecom routing? This is not to say that specialization is not important or necessary, you want a doctor that is a specialist on exactly the problem you have, and in building a semi-conductor you need specialists in that field. But the author contends that hte broad new ideas will come from breaking down barriers between departments in the university, in business and in cultures.

We all know that there are huge problems facing the world today: energy after oil, global warming, AIDS, just to name a few. They will not be solved by one technology. Energy involves everything from finding oil (and its replacement) to designing cars, to what to do about the mundane filling station that now sells only gasoline. There's no distribution system to provide for electric or hydrogen cars. The answers will come from multiple fields of study.

With the Medici Effect, Johansson launches a brilliant way of analyzing the concept of innovation and it is incredible how fast this book will make you think about the creative potential in any process or situation at hand.

The author has interviewed an impressive list of well-known pioneers from very different fields. It is their stories of successful innovation that form the basis of the work and they are presented along with research, models, and intelligent conclusions. Johansson convincingly argues that there is a pattern behind the discoveries and then he transforms this pattern into a method. Extremely insightful and extremely useful!

The Medici Effect is written with the authority of a guru - it is undoubtedly academic, yet very accessible and entertaining. This is one of those books you read that will make you look at things in a new way.

You have to like a book that starts by simply explaining the core concept on the second page: "When you step into an intersection of fields, disciplines, or cultures, you can combine existing concepts into a large number of extraordinary new ideas". The rest of the book follows in the same vein, clearly describing the underlying concepts and illustrating them with intriguing case studies from restaurants to monkey experiments. In Johansson's world, the best ideas come through diversity. He stresses that individuals and companies can and should adopt systematic processes to tap into the Medici Effect, named after the Renaissance era with the benign sponsorship of the arts and science . Whilst there is a strong element of randomness in ideation, there are distinct methods that can be followed.

I decided to prove one of the core concepts of the book straight away - using diverse stimuli to provoke creative thought. So, on a recent transatlantic trip I opened up the in-flight magazine at a random page, and attempted to 'abstract' creative concepts from a Portuguese hotel advert to help with a business problem I have been working on for a while. Sure enough, leaping from the problem to a vision of sunny beaches did the trick - problem solved!

The Medici Effect is an important book for corporate innovators as it expands the intellectual underpinnings of all our innovation activities. And bonus points to Frans - it makes an excellent read.

Mark Turrell - Imaginatik - www.imaginatik.com

Let me preface my impressions of this book by saying that I have been consuming business books by the crateful since my college days when I studied the very dry subject of organizational behaviour. So to find a so-called "business" book that absolutely does not read like one is a real gem.

From the opening introduction set in the Azores to a cruise ship sailing the world over to a winter's night in Boston in the 70s, "The Medici Effect" is a narrative of individuals from all walks of life who pushed boundaries, asked questions more relentlessly, and risked failure more than you and I would dare in our own lives. This book is an impassioned plea for us to forget everything we ever learned, to cease our obsession with compartmentalizing knowledge, and to debunk whatever the experts have told us -- these are the very things that hold us back from letting ideas run wild. It is from this free associating wildness, in what Johansson terms the "intersection," that "innovation" most often springs. A simple and very logical premise really, but Johansson gives voice to it through his exuberant and conversational style.

All in all, a fast read and personal introduction to many interesting individuals (who knew?). Moreover, I am thoroughly impressed with the innovators Johansson had access to, the great examples he uses to demonstrate his concepts, and the serious research that supports this book, drawn from a wide array of academic and mainstream literature about innovation and creativity.

The Medici Effect: Breakthrough Insights at the Intersection of Ideas, Concepts, and Cultures
by Frans Johansson

Following my recent holiday trip to Italy, particularly my revisit to the Vatican Museums in Rome & the Uffizi Museum in Florence, I became fascinated by the great work of the Medici family.

I took the opportunity to reread the personally earmarked pages of the abovementioned book. I had, in fact, already read it for the first time about three years ago.

The book's title actually refers to an explosion of creativity and imagination that occurred in Florence during the Renaissance era, stretching from the late 14th century where it started right up to the early 17th Century, where it had spread to the rest of Europe, when the powerful & influential Medici banking family funded artists, artisans, painters, sculptors, and even thinkers and scientists from many different cultures and disciplines to come together to debate, discuss, and discover new ideas. [Out of 1,000 European artists, painters & sculptors during that period, about 350 of them had lived &/or worked in Florence, Italy.]

Through their generous patronage, we are able to speak of and admire the wonderful masterpieces & elegant work of Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Botticelli, Donatello, Raphael, Ghiberti and countless others.

The book is about how all or each of us can create our own "Medici Effect" by applying the concept of juxtaposition (I reckon the author likes to use 'intersection'; as for me, I think 'juxtaposition' is more appropriate word to describe the phenomenon) as expounded in the book.

It's all about how one can apply the juxtaposition of ideas, cultures, disciplines, and strategies in new and previously unexplored ways.

You can easily read about many interesting & practical examples of the application of juxtaposition in the book, which I don't need to repeat as you can read about them in other people's reviews on the website.

The idea behind this book is simple: When you step into a juxtaposition of fields, disciplines, or cultures, you can combine existing concepts into a large number of extraordinary new ideas."

In a nut shell, the author actively promotes the concept of a broad, all-rounded education and intellectual curiosity, combined with open mind and acceptance of diversity & risks as prerequisites to breakthrough innovation.

Here is a quick overview of the book's contents:

Part 1:
The Intersection: The Intersection - Your Best Chance To Innovate;
The Rise of Intersections

Part 2:
Creating the Medici Effect: Break Down the Barriers Between Fields;
How to Make the Barriers Fall;
Randomly Combine Concepts;
How to Find the Combinations;
Ignite an Explosion of Ideas;
How to Capture the Explosion

Part 3:
Making Intersectional Ideas Happen: Execute Past Your Failures;
How to Succeed in the Face of Failure; Break Out of Your Network;
How to Leave the Network Behind; Take Risks and Overcome Fear;
How to Adopt a Balanced View of Risk;
Step into the Intersection

The book may be somewhat long-winded in many areas, especially in the beginning pages, & does not actually offer the reader with specific implementation strategies, it does, however, provide the reader with many real world examples &/or processes.

I reckon Dr James Garvin, Lead Scientist, NASA's Mars Exploration Program, more or less sums up quite well about the book:

"As I look at the exploration of Mars through the lens "The Medici Effect" offer, I see pathways ahead that were previously invisible, and possibilities that we must consider. Any book that has this effect on anyone is far more than a good read. Let the sleeper awake!"

For me, it's an excellent book about changing the way you think about creativity and inovation...& juxtaposition.

I fully concur that juxtaposition of different and diverse fields, disciplines & cultures, is a prerequisite for breakthrough innovation.

The Amazon website is one good example, as one reviewer puts it.

MacDonalds is another, combining fast food, nutrition, family lifestyle, teenaged consumers, workforce trends, cultural/ethnic preferences & more importantly, real estate as well as logistics.

As a matter of fact, Tom Kelley, brother to the brain (David Kelley)behind the IDEO outfit, has shared his company's successful innovative experiences with this phenomenon in his many books.

The US-based Global Business Network (GBN), as the world's foremost scenario planning consultancy, often juxtaposes expert (as well as naive) insights from members with diverse fields of exposure, varied professional backgrounds &/or multi-disciplinary practices to paint probable future scenarios for multi-national companies as well as governments around the world (Singapore is one of them).