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

Rating:
Summary: I LOVE this book!
Review: 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!



Rating:
Summary: The Medici Effect -- More Please?
Review: I admit I had very high expectations for the Medici Effect after hearing some positive buzz about the book. So maybe it's not surprising that I was a bit disappointed.

Frans Johansson starts with great concept: that innovation is most likely to occur at the intersection of multiple fields or areas of interest. He does an admirable job organizing and tying together a number of relevant ideas and examples. I found some of the examples to be among the most useful parts of the book because they gave meaningful details about where the innovators started and what they went through to acheive their breakthroughs.

However, much of the book's discussion about the creative process (e.g., "Creating the Medici Effect" and "Making Intersectional Ideas Happen) seemed, if anything, too basic. I'd heard much of it before. I guess the introduction and the preceding headings led me to expect more in-depth insights. But the book really "describes" the innovative process more than exploring how it happens. That's not really a flaw, but if you're expecting finer details, you may also be left wanting more.

Rating:
Summary: Clear, Concrete and Positive!
Review: I really enjoyed reading The Medici Effect! The book offers very interesting insights and practical tips on how to increase your chances to become more innovative and creative both in a business context as well as on the individual personal level. And therein lies one of its' many strengths.

How many books aren't there about famous business people and artists and how they became successful, along with rather fuzzy self-help slogans toward the end, such as: "You just have to be more confident..Or, be more creative or...(you get the idea). Well, this book steers away from that type of language, and heads off toward a completely different genre from page one.

It takes stories of innovators (some famous, some less well-known) one step further. Rather than focusing strictly on their personalities, the book looks at what are the circumstances which allowed these people to become innovative. The stories are tied to a unique idea, or concept, which the author calls The Intersection - where ideas or disciplines meet and new innovative ideas are formed. This is the central idea and message of the book.

In addition to presenting this concept, the book also offers concrete tips and ways of how the reader can reach intersections, which makes it very practical, not to mention, positive since it believes in the reader's abilities as a potential future innovator.


Rating:
Summary: The Hole Between Specialized Fields
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Road Map for Sale
Review: Johanasson's book is essentially a guide on how to reach a place he calls "The Intersection". Johanasson's argues that this is the place where innovation comes from and does a great job persuading me that he's correct.

First taking us on a tour through several interesting creations, and how the creators got to their ideas. The author has spent time finding stories from all over the globe and uses them to guide the reader into a better understanding of where the moment of discovery emerges. The path the author takes uses tales involving topics like termites, cartoons, submarines, and grain to illustrate the intersection. The second half of the book exists to help you get yourself or your team to the motherland of innovation by providing great insight from established innovators. While there are some topics I was familiar with the book provided me with several new insights including - strategies on brainstorming, how people perform under pressure, and problems with the current corporate compensation structure.

This book is both an entertaining read, and useful manual to put yourself into situations that will help you to innovate.



Rating:
Summary: A wild ride thnrough the nexus of creativity
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Gain insight into the world's most innovative people.
Review: Let me preface my review by saying that I am definitely biased. The author is an old friend from my business school days, and I have admired him and his work for years. However, I believe that my knowledge of Frans Johansson and his personality make me the perfect person to review this book.

What makes "The Medici Effect" so special is the way in which it introduces corporate fuddy-duddies like me to a constellation of the world's most innovative people. I can go down to the local Barnes & Noble and pick out 50 books that talk about traditional business role models ranging from Jeff Bezos to Sandy Weill. Those stories are told all the time.

"The Medici Effect," on the other hand, introduces you to people like superchef Marcus Samuelsson and Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic: The Gathering, the best-selling card game of all time. These are stories that you and I would probably never otherwise read. Yet Johansson does a masterful job of telling the stories, analyzing what allowed this people to innovate, and setting it in a business context.

This isn't just another business book. It doesn't give you a list of the 7 Effective Laws Of Crossing My Rich Dad's Cheese and a link to the author's consulting practice. This book shows you a completely different perspective on the world, a perspective which, if combined with your conventional business savvy, represents a potentially fruitful intersection of ideas.

Steve Jobs commanded us to "Think Different." That's easier said than done. "The Medici Effect" can help you think different, and that puts it ahead of 99.9% of the other business books on the bestseller lists.

Rating:
Summary: Creativity with a new spin
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: The Medici Effect explains and inspires innovation
Review: 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.


Rating:
Summary: Intersection - a powerful innovation concept
Review: 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