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

by Frans Johansson

Why do so many world-changing insights come from people with little or no related experience? Charles Darwin was a geologist when he proposed the theory of evolution. And it was an astronomer who finally explained what happened to the dinosaurs.

Frans Johansson’s The Medici Effect shows how breakthrough ideas most often occur when we bring concepts from one field into a new, unfamiliar territory, and offers examples how we can turn the ideas we discover into path-breaking innovations.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Science, Psychology, History, Leadership, Technology

Hardcover

First published December 1, 2004

Reviews

[Carl Audric Guia · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a great book on breaking down the barriers that hinder us from creativity. The book has insightful content and inspiring stories for those who wish to make a mark in the world.

For the immediate future (i.e. school), this will surely help in brainstorming and coming up with quality/original ideas.

[Kelly Reid · Rating 5 out of 5]

My disjointed notes from 2 and a half read-throughs.

17: Dawkins - Ideas are genetic. They propagate in the same way.

21: Seemingly unrelated concepts can almost always be combined in unexpected and potentially useful ways. Specialization has led to fragmentation of knowledge but the trend is reversing.

24: Cultural arbitrage an interesting source of inspiration.

26: We know enough about how the world works to transition from "how and why" to "X+Y".\

28: Financial systems run on similar algorithms as predator-prey ecosystems.

38: Low associative barriers, formed by being raised cross-culturally or educated interdisciplinary, are the key to emergent ideas.

39: Mind unravels a chain of associations along the path of least resistance. Creativity comes from low resistance between paths between domains of experience. This leads to exponentially more and different ideas.

47: languages encode information differently, so bilinguality is a massive advantage.

54: Creativity tactic: the assumption reversal. All X do/are/have Y --> All X do not/are not/don't have Y. Restaurants
serve food -> do not serve food, operate BYOB style.
have menus -> the chef just tells you what he's got and you say "make me something with this that and the other"
charge $ for food -> give away the food and charge by the hour

58: You need to see something from 3 POV in order to really understand it.

59: apply the idea to something or someone else. create constraints and try to operate within them.

61: a whole chapter on how Magic got started.

67: people cannot generally recognize the source of a hint, idea of inspiration. it has probably been incubating for some time, and has little to do with the moment in which it strikes.

68: coefficient of novelty - the larger difference between two ideas, the more creative the emergence.

70: take in all information and just let it marinate. be open and hear everything. let the brain smash it together in the subconscious and see what comes out.

76: Be willing to "waste time" on interesting tangential ideas (this is not permission for startup ADHD). They'll sow the seeds for random discoveries.

83: depersonalize conflicts. be willing to test things with data.

84: intentionally seed idea generation with randomness.

91: quantity of ideas = quality of ideas ( as long as you throw out the ones that eventually suck ). PRODUCE. DO WORK. great artists ship, etc.

112: Time stress destroys creativity at an amazingly rapid rate.

114: How to incubate an idea - pursue it as far as you can, until you meet significant resistance, then walk away for a few days or weeks. do this with everything, always.

126: execution = presuming success and planning for failure.

129: reward success and failure equally, and punish inaction. fire people who can't execute or take initiative.

137: rewards decrease creativity. the reward for a creative project should be naught more than recognition.

155: Deepak Chopra, "Nature in its unbroken wholeness is inherently creative".

172: Book suggestion: Against the Gods, the remarkable story of risk.

180: accepting fear = understand what's truly at stake and admit that you might lose it.

[David Rubenstein · Rating 2 out of 5]

Innovations come primarily from intersections. These are intersections between fields, between sciences, cultures, and geographic regions. The book is fun to read, and seems to be based mainly on anecdotes. But, there isn't much new here. Just a few weeks ago I read the book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, which is so similar, but better.

[Andrew Hiller · Rating 5 out of 5]

One day as my friend and fellow author Henry Sienkiewicz were talking current events, philosophy, and how ideas rub against each other to form knew thoughts, he made a dash to his bookshelf and pulled out this book called the Medici Effect. He thought it would be an interesting fit. He was right.

The Medici effect is about how to spur creativity and innovation. It looks at everyone from the inventor of the card game Magic to the people who developed GPS. Its major premise is that ideas from different and seemingly unrelated disciplines can cause huge jumps/progress. What's more interesting is how Johansson examines this paradigm through a quality/quanity perspective and how he important he thinks failure is... that and leaving yourself enough money to try at least two or three trials, but not so much money or resources that you feel safe and complacent. He also discusses how brainstorming works best and when it fails, the role of fear, risk, and how bunch of other stuff.

It's a cool book and one that skirts the borders of philosophy, management, and self-help. It's written in a very readable/approachable style. I'm not certain if these ideas are considered new anymore, but I certainly have faced the dissonance who resist what Johansson is selling. As a painter, teacher, playwright, engineer, producer, author, etc. I have routinely confused HR. They don't know where to fit me and have often worried that because I have done so many things. I can't tell you how many times I've been asked if a job I applied for would bore me.

In any case, life on the intersection is fraught with possibility and peril. The question of directional progress vs. homeostasis vs. innovation is one that intrigues me and the interviews are interesting, there were some nice laughs in the book, and a few hints.

What the book does not do is layout a blueprint. I suppose since it's about innovation it really can't. After all, how can create something wholly new by following a cookie cutter recipe?

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A ground breaking book about innovation. Innovation happens often at the intersection in 2 or more disparate fields. The whole world has been converted and in the National University of Singapore the Arts and Science departments have been merged to facilitate this effect.

The Medici were so rich, they got all the greatest thinkers together and they in turn talked to each other and caused the renaissance.

1. Make sure experts from different fields talk to each other.; unique solutions often appear.
2. One needs to have core competencies in one field, and then dabbles in other fields to come up with creative solutions.
3. Diverse teams have more points of fields
4. Try to employ people whom you don’t like (!)
5. Keep a very open mind. Ask ‘why not’ more
6. Freely associate seemingly unrelated subjects to come up with creative solutions. Fusion food, great music, unique solutions to intractable problems
7. Brainstorm properly: each participant must write down ideas first, then go thru all the items systematically. This avoids the most vocal drowning out others
8. Creative people create a lot. Some are successful, some are not
9. Don’t be afraid of failures. Put eggs into different baskets
10. Most great products do not look like their final version. Have some reserves so that resources are available for second or third tries

[Dawn Lennon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Creativity and innovation drive the success of businesses and have the capacity to advance civilization. This book looks at how that happens--through the intersection of knowledge, processes, and initiatives from diverse, unrelated disciplines. It's a concept that's been around but that doesn't take away from the insights of the book which need to be revisited routinely.

If there was ever a book that validates the need and value of diversity, it's this one. We so often get stuck in the upward trajectory of our established areas of expertise that we become stuck in directional efforts, missing out on opportunities to take risks around intersections.

This is a book that addresses the importance of risk-taking and how to do it, fund it, and sustain it effectively. It looks at fear as the great crippler. Then it provides wonderfully illustrative case studies, written in a way that salutes the human spirit and celebrates adventure.

Whether the reader is in business, the arts, or looking to discover his/her own possibilities, this book has something important to offer.

[Dr. Tathagat Varma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished listening to author's narrated audiobook, and continue to love the ideas after all these years!

Every time I read this book (perhaps now over half a dozen times!), I learn something that I missed out the last time(s) and get new ideas on how to improve creativity and innovation - not just at work but in life too. A well-researched book that should be a must-read for every professional.

[Aaron Edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes we look for justification to continue to gather knowledge, especially when we are taxed already with what is on our plates...this book reminds us why it is worth it. I very much enjoyed it.

[Marissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was mandatory for me to read this book for a class and a mandatory read is never as good as a read by choice but I was sorely disappointed by this book. Included below is a review I wrote for the class about this book.

Frans Johansson’s The Medici Effect attempts to identify the nature of innovation and advise readers on how to innovate. Though I found many faults with this book, I will not argue that this book is not interesting and valuable, because it is both. Johansson attempts to construct an air-tight paradigm. He then tries to translate this paradigm into action, which is commendable. The problem with this book is a deeply-rooted conceptual problem that I did not fully recognize until I read my second book. In The Natural History of Innovation, I saw how artfully its author dealt with this the problem of righting about innovation and it helped me to articulate the issues that irked me throughout Johansson’s entire book.
Frans Johansson has a BS in environmental science from Brown University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He was raised in Sweden but currently lives in New York City. He is an author, motivational speaker and entrepreneur. He is the leader of The Medici Group, a consulting firm that operates according to the principles Johansson describes in the book. According to their website, “The Medici Group works with individuals and organizations around the world to generate an incredible number of ideas and turn the best ones into groundbreaking solutions.” This book is, not surprisingly, a marketing tool for Johansson and I believe this slant ruined the book for me.
The study of innovation, much like the act of innovation itself, cannot be contained. It cannot be categorized, labeled and put neatly away into a small volume to be shelved for later use. Johansson makes the mistake of structuring his book too strictly. He gives names to concepts that are too fluid to name and structure to concepts that are too fluid to structure. Though his interesting anecdotes and some of his principles still ring true, this mistake devalues much of his personal analysis for me.
I do not presume to know anything about an environmental science degree but I was surprised to learn of Johansson’s having earned it. Steven Johnson, for one, is an environmental science enthusiast and it translates into his theories about innovation. I cannot say the same about Frans Johansson. His theories on innovation are seemingly based on the assumption that innovation can be pinned down, cataloged, described and packaged for our consumption. It comes across as quite unnatural as you read the book and I immediately picked up on his attempt at branding his theory. The final part of his book consists of him trying to translate theory into action but he is only partially successful. He has turned innovation into a business and I’m not sure that we, as humans, are able to structure innovation that way.
In chapter one, “The Intervention—Your Best Chance to Innovate,” Johansson summarizes his theory about innovation which goes a little something like this: The Medici Effect, for which his book is named, is defined as, “an explosion of extraordinary ideas��� done by “bringing together different disciplines and cultures and searching for the places where they connect.” These connections between cultures and disciplines are what Johansson calls The Intersection. Intersectional Ideas are cross-disciplinary in nature. All other ideas, generated by the way we are used to thinking within one discipline, are called Directional Ideas.
The next chapter completes part one in this book and it celebrates the rise in intersections promulgated by technological development in recent years. Here Johansson uses amusing examples, such as music artist Sharkira and computer animation company Pixar, to prove this point. This chapter also sets the tone for the remaining two parts of the book. It is replete with interesting, anecdotal information that Johansson uses to sustain his theories. This format is the most enjoyable part of the book and the reader learns much more from them than he or she learns from Johansson’s own ideas, I my opinion.
The Intersection is truly the focus of not only part one, but the whole of Johansson’s book. The Medici Effect is barely mentioned because it is unnecessary. One may just called it “innovation.” I noticed this superficial structure right off the bat. Johansson is sure to give all of these things proper names which he capitalized all throughout the book, as if he has discovered a new species that he has the right to name. In reality, these are catch-phrases that help him market his ideas. I cannot fault him for that professionally, it is quite clever, but it is disappointing to a reader who is expecting an interpretation of innovation from an environmental scientist. I expected the book, and the theories it contains, the take on a much more natural, uncontrolled character.
Part two is made up of chapters three through eight. I expected Johansson to use this part of the book to deepen his theory, to really let them take root in my mind. But to my surprise (but not to my dismay), his words in these chapters leaned more towards action than anything else. Chapter three explains the need for innovators to break down barriers between disciplines. Marcus Samuelsson, a fellow Swede, and an “Intersectional” chef, is the recurring example that Johansson uses in this chapter. Since my husband is a chef and I am admittedly a bit of a foodie, I loved this parallel.
In the next chapter, Johansson goes on to advise his readers how to break down Associative Barriers. These are the artificial barriers we have placed in our brain that mirror the barriers between fields in reality. Though still interesting, some of the examples he uses in this chapter are a little weak. There was one exceptional example, however, that of the RSA cipher. Johansson is trying to describe how reversing our assumptions about things can lead us to innovative solutions to problems we may be having. Experts were trying to find a way to secure Internet transactions. It was assumed that the initiator of the transaction would lock his information using special encoding and only he could distribute the information needed to break the code. This way, only authorized users could have access to his secure information. The problem was finding a way to securely transmit the information that would break the code.
Using their current model, they would need another lock and another key code, and this could go on forever, never truly securing the information. At this point, experts reversed their assumptions that the transaction initiator would hold the locked information and that the authorized users would gain the keys to it. Thus, RSA ciphers were born. The solution called for the initiator to hand out locked information (i.e. the users were in possession of it), and he would keep the key himself, never having to revel it to others, but using it whenever he wished to transmit secure information. The reversal was simple but it because the foundation for all future Internet transactions.
The subsequent three chapters are disappointing in that they all pretty much deal with the same thing: ingenious combinations of ideas and how to get them. The anecdotes that Johansson presents in these chapters are the most interesting and they really bolster his theory about The Intersection. My only complaint is that there were three chapters of it when one longer one would suffice. To me, it was a continuation of his tendency to over-structure everything.
The last chapter in part two is, to me, the closest that Johansson comes to turning his theories into action. It is called, “How to Capture the Explosion” and it describes how one can manage the influx of Intersectional Ideas that result from a true Intersection. This is interesting consider that this is what part three is supposed to do. Part three consists of five chapters that are, according to Johansson, about putting The Medici Effect into action, making it work for you. To me, part three read more like any old business advice column, drawing little from the theories he laid out in part one. Nonetheless, Johansson gave sound advice; he recommends that you move past failure, and don’t let it ruin your drive. He also advises readers to leave their professional networks behind. This is perhaps not one of the most common pieces of professional advice but I have heard it before. The problem with this part of Johansson’s theory is that he assumes that all networks are self-contained. Perhaps the lease effective networks are, but my idea of an effective network is one that spans fields, which is exactly what Johansson advocates.
However, amidst his fairly ineffectual part three, Johansson hid a gem. I particularly enjoyed chapter fourteen, which was about “adopting a balanced view of risk.” Johansson cites risk experiments with interesting implications in order to establish our risk-taking behaviors. He believes they are holding us back from generating innovative ideas. He lists a few risk-related traps that humans tend to fall into and he attempts to persuade his reader to abandon these destructive attitudes about risk. This chapter may not have told us anything more that any expert on risk is able to tell us but it was sure interesting. It is also placed in the perfect spot in the book, at the end. By this time, the reader is thinking, “what kind of crazy nut has the time, the knowledge, the sheer courage, to do any of these things?” I think Johansson does a good job of answering that question with his second to last chapter.
The Medici Effect was a quick and enjoyable read and I gleaned some insight into innovation that I did not have before.

[marc Gottesman · Rating 2 out of 5]

In the middle of reading this, but 20 pages in and I get it already. Do I finish the book?

I get the point. But the writing is pretty uninteresting.

[Martyn Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book could have been about 10% of its actual 190+ page length. The argument doesn't really build on itself as the book progresses as much as it just has a bunch of supporting data points for the argument already made in the first 10 pages. I read the entire thing for the interesting stories and facts.

Medici Effect = igniting the explosion of extraordinary ideas by bringing together different disciplines and cultures and searching for places where they connect, reminiscent of the 15th century Italian family that brought together thinkers and creators of all types and spurred an incredible place of innovation in history.

P4. Eastgate Shopping Center in Harare utilizes a temp regulation system derived from studying termine mounds.

P18-9. Directional vs Intersectional ideas. Directional = fairly predictable steps in a known space. intersectional = novel, open up entirely new fields, surprising, huge leaps

P17. Dawkins- ideas are like genes. They compete for space in the hierarchy.

P25. America “discovered” at least three times- native Americans via Bering Strait, Vikings via Greenland and Newfoundland, and Columbus. Impossible to do so today because spaces have been mapped out.

P40. Associative barriers. High associative Barrier = conventional logic, Strings of associations. Low associative barriers = ideas have few logical commitments

P47. HSBC advertisements in Heathrow and London Underground:
Yellow in USA = cowardice
Yellow in Malaysia = royalty
Yellow in Venezuela = lucky underwear
Grasshopper in USA = pest
Grasshopper in China = pet
Grasshopper in N. Thailand = appetizer

The same thing represents something vastly different in different areas of the world.

P49. Third culture kids are the coolest.

P51. Broad education and intense self education appear to be the keys to learning differently. If you’re goal is to innovate, spend significant amounts of time reading, drawing, learning and experimenting without guidance from instructors, peers and experts. Examples: Steve Jobs and Charles Darwin

P54. Reverse assumptions. Example: encryption previously thought to be a shared key (German enigma). 1970s = challenges that assumption of shared key. Vulnerable to exploitation and hacking. Instead, copy the lock.
How to: 1. Think of situation and all assumptions.
2. Write down those assumptions and reverse them.
3. How do you make those reversals meaningful?

P66. Creating a Medici-type idea: lesson 1- it’s the combination of different concepts, lesson 2- it’s random.

P73. Find the unique combinations by diversifying occupations, interacting with diverse groups of people and by going intersection hunting.

P81. The unstructured job interview has virtually no validity as a selection tool. Both the interviewer and the interviewee search for common ground with each other. The result is the hiring of people very much like those already in the organization.

P82. If hiring for a creative role, then looking for personnel fit is the wrong way to go about it.

P83. There is a reason other than genetics for our tendency to hang out with people like us: it makes everything easier. Hiring people we dislike can lead to trouble- arguments and negative atmosphere. Simply bringing people together from different disciplines and cultures, with varied thinking styles, different values and diverse attitudes is not the same as putting together an innovative team. Basic problematic group dynamics will work against you unless the group is managed appropriately.

P85. Take thought walks when faced with a problem and interact with tangible things that seem unrelated... buy, feel, pick up, borrow something. Note the characteristics of the thing in writing.

P91. The intersection of cultures, fields and disciplines generates combinations of different ideas, but also generates a massive number of those combinations.

P96. Part of Hotmail’s success was that it included a sign up link in every email. This has now become standard fare in all email newsletters.

P96-97. On scientists and academic publications: the best way to see who has written groundbreaking papers is to look at who has published the most. BUT
- Quality of papers published by author does not increase after success.
- Scientists produced breakthroughs at random points throughout their careers
- The best predictor when a scientist will produce their most exceptional contributions is when they produce the most.

P103. Seize the opportunities at the intersection by striking a balance between breadth and depth, actively generating a lot of ideas, allowing time for evaluation.

P108. Alex Osborn 1957 book Applied Imagination
- produce as many ideas as possible
- Produce ideas as wild as possible
- Build on each other’s ideas
- Avoid passing judgment on ideas

P112. Under time constraints people are less creative but unaware of that. In fact, quite the opposite- they believe themselves to be more creative.

P113. If you want to create intersectional ideas, your best bet is probably to take your time because 1. it is critical to postpone judgment of new ideas and 2. the incubation period of an idea is even more important. The incubation period is the time between when one stops thinking heavily about a problem and when one suddenly, subconsciously comes up w a solution. It is so well documented in creativity research that it is simply bad planning to omit time for it in project planning.

P124. Mistakes are inevitable if you want to succeed.

P127. What makes someone successful at the intersection? Try ideas that fail to find those that won’t, reserve resources for trial and error, and remain motivated.

P129. If people show low failure rates, be suspicious. Maybe they are not taking enough risks or maybe they are hiding their mistakes.

P131. The zoomer was the precursor to the Palm Pilot.

P136. Skinner effect = if a particular behavior is rewarded then that behavior will be repeated and improved.

P137. If a reward is offered it decreases creative output.

P143. Ant story. Ants search for the quickest path to their destination for the group by sending out foraging ants. Each one releases a pheromone- the stronger the scent the more ants it attracts. The ant that find the quickest path from the nest to the food will have to strongest smelling trail since it returned fastest.
Known as swarm intelligence, now used in routing data pathways and in UAVs

P145. Your network will tend to urge you to stay within your field and away from the intersection. They do so by promoting, supporting and highlighting ideas that are valued within the network. This has a filtering effect and creates a challenge. If we want to succeed at innovation, we have to break away from the very networks that have made us successful.

P153. In order to leave the network behind you must break the chain of dependence and prepare for a fight.

P161. The final piece that allows one to exploit the benefits of the intersection is a high tolerance for risk.

P162. Branson started Virgin Atlantic with just two phone calls- a call to a competitor that never went through causing him to think that they either had horrible customer service or too many customers to handle well, and a call to Boeing to lease a jet for a year.

P163. The risk people tend to fear most is not financial loss or wasted time. It’s the risk to their pride, status, and prestige. In other words, the risk of failure can weigh more heavily than what is actually at risk.

P167. Risk homeostasis = people will compensate for taking higher risks in one area of life by taking lower risks in another.

P171. Humans are not exactly rational when we think about risk. Emotions get in the way. Two strategies you can follow are avoid behavioral traps relating to risk, and acknowledging risks and fears.

P172. Great story from Against the Gods book by Peter Bernstein.
One winter night during one of the many German air raids on Moscow in WW2, a distinguished Soviet professor of statistics showed up at his local air raid shelter. He had never appeared there before. “There are 7 million people in Moscow,” he used to say. “Why should I expect them to hit me?”
His friends were astonished to see him and asked what happened to change his mind. “Look,” he explained, “there are 7 million people in Moscow and one elephant. Last night they got the elephant.
The role of emotions.

P174. Prospect theory = its not so much that we hate uncertainty but that we fear losing. It is not as easy to see how things could get instantly better, but its easy to see how they could immediately get worse.

P175. Poker: the key to winning is to stay disciplined. Make sure to bet big when you have good cards and stay low when you don’t. It is all about winning more when you win and losing less when you lose. Observation of people: ppl make riskier bets when things are going poorly, but lock in a win early when things are going well. Those are the people who end up losing money in the long run.

P181. Mark Twain quote: Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.

P189. We can all create the Medici Effect because we can all get to the intersection. The advantage goes to those with an open mind and the willingness to reach beyond their field of expertise. It goes to the people who can break down barriers and stay motivated through failures. Just dare to step in…

[Jeremy Diederich · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't believe this book only gets 3.5 stars. I will write more later but this truly astonishes me. This is a fascinating book.

[Soumabh Banerjee · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book talks about working towards an idea which might be at an intersection of two or more fields and the challenges and risk associated with it. Great read.

[MaNoora · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful

[Lucas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bạn sẽ làm gì nếu có ý tưởng hay ho mà bạn nghĩ chỉ mình bạn có nhưng sau đấy phát hiện ra có người đã viết cả một quyển sách về chuyện đó rồi?

[Antonio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book title The Medici Effect, comes from a remarkable burst of creativity in fifteenth-century Italy. Thanks to Medici family and a few others like it, sculptors, scientists, poets, philosophers, financiers, painters, and architects converged upon the city of Florence. There they found each other, learned from one another, and broke down barriers between disciplines and cultures. Together they forged a new world based on new ideas--what became known as the Renaissance. The main idea is that Medici family formed an Intersection of people and ideas which then develop new kind of ideas, innovation and new avenues of development in science, art, businesses and life.

When you connect two separate fields, you also set off an exponential increase of unique concept combinations, a veritable explosion of combinations of ideas. For example if you take rock music there is about 2,400 variations (this is number of combinations when you multiply 4 basic rock instruments with cca 12 different structures and about 50 different vocals) to develop new music. Similary, if you multiply 30 classical instruments with about 40 different structures and only 2 different vocals) you get again 2,400 variationas. However, if you combine rock music and classic music you get more than 6 million variations.

In summary, intersectional innovations share the following characteristics:
➣ They are surprising and fascinating.
➣ They take leaps in new directions.
➣ They open up entirely new fields.
➣ They provide a space for a person, team, or company to call its own.
➣ They generate followers, which means the creators can become leaders.
➣ They provide a source of directional innovation for years or decades to come.
➣ They can affect the world in unprecedented ways.

So this is my assessment of the book The Medici Effect by Frans Johansson according to my 8 criteria:
1. Related to practice - 4 stars
2. It prevails important - 4 stars
3. I agree with the read - 5 stars
4. not difficult to read (as for non English native) - 4 stars
5. Too long (more than 500 pages) - short and concise (150-200 pages) - 4 stars
6. Boring - every sentence is interesting - 4 stars
7. Learning opportunity - 5 stars
8. Dry and uninspired style of writing - Smooth style with humouristic and fun parts - 4 stars

Total 4.25 stars

The Medici Effect - Frans Johansson (Highlight: 68; Note: 0)
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Here are some highlights and excerpts from the book that I find worth remembering (Complete highlights and excerpts from the book you can find at https://antoniozrilic.com/myblog):
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▪ The name I have given this phenomenon, the Medici Effect, comes from a remarkable burst of creativity in fifteenth-century Italy.

▪ The Medicis were a banking family in Florence who funded creators from a wide range of disciplines. Thanks to this family and a few others like it, sculptors, scientists, poets, philosophers, financiers, painters, and architects converged upon the city of Florence. There they found each other, learned from one another, and broke down barriers between disciplines and cultures. Together they forged a new world based on new ideas--what became known as the Renaissance. As a result, the city became the epicenter of a creative explosion, one of the most innovative eras in history. The effects of the Medici family can be felt even to this day

▪ The major difference between a directional idea and an intersectional one is that we know where we are going with the former. The idea has a direction. Directional innovation improves a product in fairly predictable steps, along a well-defined dimension. Ex- amples of directional innovation are all around us because they repre- sent the majority of all innovations

▪ Intersectional innovations, on the other hand, change the world in leaps along new directions. They usually pave the way for a new field and therefore make it possible for the people who originated them to be- come the leaders in the fields they created. Intersectional innovations also do not require as much expertise as directional innovation and can therefore be executed by the people you least suspect. Although inter- sectional innovations are radical, they can work in both large and small ways. They can involve the design of a large department store or the topic of a novella; they can include a special-effects technique or the prod- uctdevelopment for a multinational corporation.

In summary, intersectional innovations share the following characteristics:
➣ They are surprising and fascinating.
➣ They take leaps in new directions.
➣ They open up entirely new fields.
➣ They provide a space for a person, team, or company to call its own.
➣ They generate followers, which means the creators can become leaders.
➣ They provide a source of directional innovation for years or decades to come.
➣ They can affect the world in unprecedented ways.

▪ The models we use to explain the evolution of financial strategies are mathematically similar to the equations biologists use to understand populations of predator-prey systems, competing systems, and symbiotic systems,” says renowned investment manager Robert Hagstrom, vice president and executive director of Legg Mason Focus Capital.

▪ Although chains of associations have huge benefits, they also carry costs. They inhibit our ability to think broadly. We do not question assumptions as readily; we jump to conclusions faster and create barriers to alternate ways of thinking about a particular situation.

▪ Researchers have long suspected that these associative barriers are responsible for inhibiting creativity.

▪ When Samuelsson thinks of, say, tomatoes, his as- sociations reach further than for most Swedish or European chefs. When I say pesto, he doesn’t think basil; he says dill. If I say tandoori, he doesn’t instantly think chicken; he says smoked salmon.

▪ A person with high associative barriers will quickly arrive at conclusions when confronted with a problem since their thinking is more focused. He or she will recall how the problem has been handled in the past, or how others in similar situations solved it.

▪ A person with low associative barriers, on the other hand, may think to connect ideas or concepts that have very little basis in past experi- ence, or that cannot easily be traced logically. Therefore, such ideas are often met with resistance and sentiments such as, “If this is such a good idea, someone else would have thought of it.” But that is precisely what someone else would not have done, because the connection between

▪ the two concepts is not obvious. Two people or two teams--one with high barriers, the other with low barriers--will approach a similar op- portunity in completely different ways.

▪ Research also indicates that people who are fluent in multiple languages tend to exhibit greater creativity than others. Languages codify concepts differently, and the ability to draw upon these varied perspectives during a creative process gener- ates a wider range of associations.3

▪ Assumption reversals are a remarkably effective way to challenge the way you think about almost anything. The example outlined here comes from the outstanding book Cracking Creativity by Michael Michalko.13 The purpose is not necessarily to come up with a specific idea, but to shake your mind free from preconceived notions. This is how it works: 1.­First, think of a situation, product, or concept related to a chal- lenge you are facing, and think about the assumptions associated with that situation. 2.­Next, write down those assumptions; then reverse them. 3.­Finally, think about how to make those reversals meaningful

▪ For instance, suppose you wish to open a new restaurant but are having difficulty coming up with a novel concept. First list some of the more common assumptions involved in running a restaurant, and then reverse them

▪ Now try to think of ways you could conceivably build a sustainable business out of each reversal. Here are some examples:
➣ A restaurant with no menus: The chef informs each customer what he bought that day at the meat, vegetable, and fish markets. The diner selects the desired food items and the chef creates a dish from them, specifically for each customer.
➣ A restaurant that does not charge for food: This restaurant is a café where people get together to talk and work with each other. The café charges for time spent instead of food consumed. Selected low-cost food items and beverages are given for free.
➣ A restaurant that does not serve food: The restaurant has a unique and beautiful décor in an exotic environment. People bring their own food and beverages in picnic baskets and pay a service charge for the location

▪ groundbreaking innovators also produce a heap of ideas that never amount to anything. We play only about 35 percent of Mozart’s, Bach’s, or Beethoven’s com- positions today; we view only a fraction of Picasso’s works; and most of Einstein’s papers were not referenced by anyone.8 Many of the world’s celebrated writers have also produced horrible books, innovative movie directors have made truly uncreative duds, megasuccessful entrepreneurs have disappointed investors, and pioneering scientists have published papers with no impact whatsoever on their colleagues

▪ In his influential book Origins of Genius, psychologist Dean Simonton from the University of California­ Davis explains why we see this relationship between production and success. He says innovators don’t produce because they are successful, but that they are successful because they produce. Quantity of ideas leads to quality of ideas.

▪ Simonton verified that the relationship between quantity and quality indeed holds true. The number of papers a scientist publishes, for instance, is correlated with the number of citations the scientist receives for his or her top three works. In other words, the best way to see who has written groundbreaking papers is to look at who has published the most. You can test this a hundred different ways, but the results come out the same.

▪ When you connect two separate fields, you also set off an exponential increase of unique concept combinations, a veritable explosion of ideas. Or, to put it succinctly, if being productive is the best strategy to innovate, then the Intersection is the best place to innovate.

▪ How many combinations, then, could the average rock musician generate based on these variations? How many times could he combine different instruments with different structures and different vocals before he ran out of combinations? By simply multiplying the variations in each group, we see that a rock musician in this example has 4 x 12 x 50, or 2,400, combinations to work with when developing new music.

▪ If we calculate the variations as we did for the rock musician, we find that a classical composer can choose from a total of 30 x 40 x 2, or 2,400 concept combinations when trying to come up with new music.

▪ L inus pauling, Nobel laureate in both chemistry and peace, once said, “The best way to get a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.”

▪ In his influential 1957 book, Applied Imagination, Alex Osborn suggested brainstorming as a method for groups that were solving problems.6 According to Osborn, brainstorming would greatly increase the quantity and quality of ideas generated by the group. The rules for brainstorming were easy. The group should:
1.­Produce as many ideas as possible
2.­Produce ideas as wild as possible
3.­Build upon each other’s ideas
4.­Avoid passing judgment on ideas

▪ In a brainstorming group only one person can speak at a time, although not necessarily in any particular order. If everyone spoke at once, no one would hear what the others said. But this presents a big problem for us humans. Our short-term memory is not capable of developing new ideas and at the same time keeping the old ones in active storage. If we become blocked in reporting our ideas because we have to wait for someone else to describe theirs, we may forget them altogether.

▪ While brainwriting, people simultaneously generate written ideas on the same problem, building off each other’s ideas without speaking at all. Here is how you do it:9 Everyone sits at a table together, each person with a blank sheet of paper. Another blank sheet is in the middle of the table within everyone’s reach. The basic problem to be solved or explored has been clearly described or written down. At the start of the session, each person writes (or sketches) one idea on the sheet in front of them, tosses that sheet into the center of the table, and then picks up a sheet put in by someone else. The person reads the idea on that sheet and tries to build on it in some way. Whether or not they can directly build on it, they write another idea, toss the sheet into the center, and continue. Whenever anyone picks up a sheet from the center of the table, they read through prior ideas, trying to make con- nections and ignite sparks of new ideas.

▪ Mistakes and false starts are part of the process for making ideas happen at the Intersection. If we hope to innovate, we must factor them into the equation. We must continue executing ideas and move past our failures. But how? What ultimately makes someone like Deborah Prothrow-Stith, or anyone else for that matter, successful at the Intersection? In short, she was willing to
➣ Try ideas that fail to find those that won’t
➣ Reserve resources for trial and error
➣ Remain motivated

▪ we know that the likelihood of quality increases with high output, but it’s not guaranteed. It is more likely, however, that unsuccessful mass producers are not pursuing different ideas, but are simply producing incremental variations of similar (and mistaken) ideas. Imagine, for instance, writing fifteen very similar books on a topic no one finds worthwhile or valuable. It is all right to make new mistakes, but not to repeat old ones.

▪ One characteristic of intersectional ideas is that many assumptions you make during development will be wrong. This is why you must not only expect failures but also plan for them. Deborah Prothrow-Stith did it. So did Hawkins and Dubinsky. Anyone succeeding at the Intersection will tell you the same story; their original idea had to be modified again and again. Picasso, for instance, used up no less than eight notebooks just for preliminary sketches of his revolutionary painting, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.10 This approach, however, requires a careful preservation of re- sources, whether those resources are money, time, reputation, contacts, or power.

▪ Perhaps the most important strategy for success at the Inter- section is to remain motivated. If you stay motivated

[Ravi Raman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very important book that can potentially hold the key to finding innovations to solve many of the societal and technological problems we are facing today. This book is one of the few business books I rate five stars. It’s an easy to read and thought-provoking guide, with plenty of stories to back up the theory. I often paused after each chapter to think and apply some of the techniques mentioned. The idea of stepping into an intersection is so simple, and something anyone can do at any age to be more creative and innovative.

[Scott Schang · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book opened my eyes to innovation through the intersection of ideas and concepts from outside my specific area of expertise. Understanding that true innovation does not come from what is already known, but from what cannot be known, was something that really made an impact on me. After reading this book, I was compelled to begin looking at the perceived challenges in my own business through from a different perspective. I jumped into other industries and areas that I previously did not think would be relevant. The more I focused on looking for and appreciating the challenges and solutions of other industries, the easier it was for me to find innovation in my own world.

[John Stepper · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fine premise - that innovation comes at the intersection between fields - but one that deserves better examples.

This same idea is found in Stephen Johnson's "Where Good ideas Come From" several years later. Yet Johnson's is the better book because of his examples and his analysis of innovation over time

[Captain Nemo · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of the most interesting books I've read in a long time. In this book, Frans is digging into the world of the intersection and how to look for it. A must read for dreamers, lost people, random people, innovators, doers and others that feel that way :)

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book. Great stories to back up new theory on creativity. Too bad the author limits himself to work and business ideas instead of a life philosophy.

[Ash · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is about Peter's Cafe. It is a must read - incredibly enlightening and inspiring.

p. 2: Peter's Cafe is a nexus point in the world, one of the most extreme I have ever seen. There is another place just like Peter's Cafe, but it is not in the Azores. It is in our minds. It is a place where different cultures, domains, and disciplines stream together toward a single point. They connect, allowing for established concepts to clash and combine, ultimately forming a multitude of new, groundbreaking rules. This place, where the different fields meet, is what I call the Intersection. And the explosion of remarkable innovations that you find there is what I call the Medici Effect.

p. 17: Ideas, or memes, compete, in a real sense, for space in our minds. Some memes persist and transform, others die out; the process is similar to that of genetic evolution.

P. 20: This explosion of remarkable ideas is what happened in Florence during the Renaissance, and it suggests something very important. If we can just reach an intersection of disciplines or cultures, we will have a greater chance of innovating, simply because there are so many unusual ideas to go around.

P. 26: New discoveries, world-changing discoveries, will come from the intersections of disciplines, not from within them.

P. 27: Alan Leshner ~ "Disciplinary science has died...Most major advancements involve multiple disciplines. It is rarer and rarer to see single-author papers. And ofthen the multiple authors are from different disciplines."

P. 38: The answer is that Samuelsson has low associative barries. He has an ability to easily connect different concepts across fields. Specifically, he has an ability to find winning combinations of foods from Sweden and the rest of the world. We can all break down our associative barriers like that. In fact, if we wish to find the Intersection, it is a requirement.

P. 40: Researchers have long suspected that these associative barries are responsible for inhibiting creativity. Experiments have been conducted to examine the difference between high and low associative barries. One of the first conclusions made by one of the earliest creativity researchers, J.P. Guilford, is that creative minds tend to make unusual associations because they engage in so-called divergent thinking...Guilford's conclusion was that a person with low associative barriers is more likely to think broadly when responding to a word such as "foot" and is therefore able to come up with more unusual ideas.

P. 47: The mere fact that an individual is different from most people around him promotes more open and divergent, perhaps even rebellious, thinking in that person. Such a person is more prone to question traditions, rules, and boundaries - and to search for answers where others may not think to.

P. 50: But [Maeder] clearly sees [education] as potentially limiting creativity. Why is that? Through school, mentors, and organizational cultures, education tends to focus on what a particular field has seen as valid. If, for instance, you wish to be a great medical doctor, there are rules that must be mastered. A good education will teach you those rules. You learn what past experts and thinkers concluded and use their experiences to build your own expertise.

P. 51 Maeder ~ "Innovators are often self-taught. They tend to be the types that educate themselves intesely, and they often have a broad learning experience, having excelled in one field and learned another." Broad education and self-education, then, appear to be two keys to learning differently.

P. 52: ...younger people are often less constrained by their education within a field since they have not yet had too much of it. It would follow, then, that learning a new field, whether one is young or old, can help break down associative barries.


P. 52: Paul Maeder's second characteristic for success at the Intersection was self-education. By learning fields and disciplines on our own we have a greater chance of approaching them from a different perspective. In fact, formal education often looks like an inverted U when correlated with one's success as a creator. That is, formal education first increases the probability of attaining creative success, but after an optimum point it actually lowers the odds. The point occurs a bit earlier for artistic careers and a bit later for scientific paths
- Didn't ME Coe draw something like this once? That staircase/escalator of improving your career? Move on every 5-7 years?




P. 53: Darwin concluded, "I consider that all that I have learned of any value to be self-taught."


P. 67: ...creativity comes from combining concepts in an unusual fashion.

P. 67: ...it is difficult to trace the origin of an insight.
- So that means, don't worry if you can't figure out why or how you know something. It's fine. Others are like that too, and will understand if you say this quote.

P. 75: If your goal [as a company] is to keep execution at a premium and to innovate in small, directional steps, specialization is the right path. However, if you wish to develop fresh, groundbreaking ideas, highly varied experiences are critical.

P. 76: Orit Gadiesh, chairman of Bain ~ "Some people say that the modern-day Renaissance man is an investment banker who likes to go horseback riding on the weekend he has off, or somethingl ike that...That's not a Renaissance man, that's a man with a hobby. A Renaissance man is someone who can see trends and patterns and integrate what he knows. To me the modern Renaissance man is curious, interested in different things. You have to be willing to 'waste time' on things that are not directly relevant to your work because you are curious. But then you are able to, sometimes unconsciously, integrate them back into your work."

P. 77: Orit Gadiesh ~ "Don't get me wrong. At this point we have experts in just about every business. We have people who can talk about consumer products and high-tech in their sleep. We have to. That's the easy part. But we don't let somebody just do that for their entire career, all the time. That was why I said we make people switch areas and fields. It is fundamental at Bain, a core resason for our success. You become better at your area of expertise when you actually take a chance and do something else."

P. 77: ...individuals who expect to develop intersectional ideas cannot simply hope that their organization will provide them with occupational diversification. They have to control their own fate. By making sure that we gain exposure to different fields during our career, we set ourselves up for more random concept combinations.

- Speaking of Dune, do you remember that book that you've been trying to remember for more than a decade now, but can't? Your memories of that book are only gonna fade, and you've never been able to find it. You even asked a librarian, but they couldn't think of it either...what if you wrote the book yourself? It was about a boy who encountered a sandstorm and was taken to a completely alternate reality, planet...everything. Taken away from his family, and dropped into a new culture. Almost like Ender's Game.

P. 79: There is little doubt that diverse teams, like the one at Bletchely Park, have a greater chance of coming up with unique ideas. I don't mean diversity only in terms of disciplines, but also in terms of culture, ethnicity, geography, age, and gender. Diversity in teams allows different viewpoints, approaches, and frames of mind to emerge. Diversity is also a proven way to increase the randomness of concept combinations. It is often said that one of the reasons for the United States' unparalleled innovation rate is its very diverse population. People who have experienced the innovative power of diverse teams tend to do everything they can to encourage them.

P. 85: Michael Michalko, whom I mentioned in the last chapter, describes another way of going intersection hunting, something he calls "taking a thought walk."

P. 103: Linus Pauling ~ "The best way to get a good idea is to have a lot of ideas."

P. 106: The funny thing is that we often take a "batch" approach to certain tasks in life. When we boil potatoes, we peel and then cook all of them at the same time. We don't peel and cook them one by one because that obviously would be a complete waste of time and energy. But we often develop ideas this way. If we get an idea that seems promising, we tend to delve deeper into the idea until it either works or it doesn't. If it isn't successful, we start over with another good idea. But this is not the best way to use our time or creative energy. In order to maximize the power of the Intersection, we should generate many ideas before evaluating any one of them.

P. 106: One of the best ways to brainstorm privately is to place the target for the number of ideas that you wish to generate before you start considering whether they are any good.

P. 107: Tom Kelley ~ "The buzz of a good brainstormer can infect a team with optimism and a sense of opportunity that can carry it through the darkest and most pressure-tinged stages of a project."

P. 113: Probably the best insurance against prejudging ideas is to write them down or diagram them when they occur to you. This will allow you to return to the idea at frequent intervals.
- this is kinda what your global mind map was about. Keep building it up. It will pay dividends later.
- Reread Name of the Wind after this book. You will not regret it.

P. 120: Since quantity of ideas leads to quality of ideas, we should pursue many ideas. This, however, leads to the inescapable paradox that in order to be successful at the Intersection, we must have many failures. The solution to this paradox that in order to be successful at the Intersection, we must have many failures. The solution to this paradox is to incorporate failures into our overall execution plan. In other words, we have to execute past our failures.

P. 125: The more ideas you execute, the greater the chance of realizing something truly groundbreaking. But not every one of your ideas will work out. Innovative people, then, experience more failures than their less creative counterparts because they pursue more ideas. It is thus very difficult - indeed, this book argues practically impossible - to realize ideas at the Intersection by flawlessly executing well-defined actional planes. yet this is how most of use are trained to think about strategy and implementation. We are, in fact, conditioned to approach any new challenge with questions such as: What is our goal and how will we get there?


P. 125: The major difference between a directional idea and an intersectional one is that we know where we are going with the former...the Intersection is a place where our understanding of what to do and how to do it is opaque, at best. An intersectional idea can go in any number of directions.


P. 145: ...your network will promote, support, and highlight ideas that are valued within it. And it squashes or removes ideas that are not. This inherent characteristic creates a difficult paradox for anyone pursuing an intersection idea: If we wish to succeed at the intersection of fields, we have to break away from the very networks that made us successful.

P. 152: Both people and firms in a value network will have set up processes and procedures that essentially kill of attempts to break out of it. New ideas that do not correspond to the values of the network have a way of getting eliminated. This is why we must break out of these networks if we want to enter the Intersection with the highest chance of success.

P. 156: "When I started out people thought I was on some fringe. They thought I was certifiably insane." But Chopra was willing to risk his reputation. "It's the prime principle of creativity: You must take risks. All creativity lies in the unknown, not in the known."

P. 157: Take a good look around you and try to break away from the networks. Take a good look around you and try to spot these things that have become critical pieces of your value network over the years. I am not suggesting that you abandon them, but if you wish to enter the Intersection, you must stop depending on them.

P. 159: Torvalds fought against early naysayers, and, later, against corporations such as Microsoft. Although your confrontations may never be this extreme, you must be preparted to fight those that doubt or fear yoru explorations at the Intersection. Otherwise you might as well resign yourself to your established field.

P. 163: The risk people tend to fear most is not financial loss or wasted time. Rather, it is the risk to their pride, status, and prestige, to what their peers will think of them if they fail. In other words, the risk of failure can weigh more heavily than what is at risk.

P. 164: If you take a course of action that is widely seen as correct, your reputation barely suffers if you did not make it all the way. If, on the other hand, you proceed in a way that is less understood and fail, it might be tougher to live down because you will be judged harshly. The stigma of failure can be crushing. The economist and "worldly philosopher" John Maynard Keynes but it succenctly: "[I]t is better to fail conventionally than succeed unconventionally."

P. 165: Howard Berke - "Many people become prisoners of the fear of failure."

P. 166: Howard Berke - "If you identify confluence between two industries it can for the basis for a new industry, but there are risks with that. The risk is that, yes, you can be right, but you can be early. The danger is that the particular fields intersect, but not for another ten years. You get to this place you call the Intersection, but there is no one else at the party."

P. 166 [Howard Berke] sees little point in creating a company doing something that established businesses already do. Instead, he's drive by the opportunity to innovate. "This way, you at least have a [i] shot[/i] at being a breakthrough company."

P. 168: ...more money leads to greater spending. Having more time means taking more time. Having greater experience or better contacts means relying more on them to get things done.
- In other words, "work fills up the amount of time it is allocated"

P. 169: If you want to create something revolutionary, head toward the Intersection. The Intersection represents the best chance to innovate because of the explosion of unique concept combinations. It offers a great numerical advantage when looking for fresh ideas. In other words, the Intersection is a low-risk proposition for breaking new ground.

P. 176: If you have spent years within a field, that fact alone can convince you to stay put even if it's a lost cause. A friend might complain to you that he no longer likes his job, saying "I've invested so much in this career that it just isn't worth it to break off at this point." Like the fear of loss, this is another risk-related example of an emotional entanglement. If we have invested heavily we figure we should keep on investing. But the truth is that regardless of whether we're talking about time or money, both are sunk costs. Since they cannot be retrieved, only the future matters...simply being aware of it makes it easier to voercome, and helps us choose to move on.

P. 178: The people I have met all managed to do it by shifting their perspective regarding intersectional risks. Howard Berke, for instance, is focused on [i]learning[/i]...Berke wants to understand how new industries work and be at the forefront of new fields...Richard Brandon values the [i]fun[/i] of doing something different. It is his "most important business criterion."...exploring intersectional ideas will always yield downstream benefits - making it a fairly low-risk proposition.

[Sunny · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really like this book. The very basic premise is around the concept which asks you to question what would precipitate or emerge if you took two or three or four or many completely disperate ideas and scrunched them into one. Hence the front page of the book which shows the little mosquito standing next to a giant elephant. Lots of really good examples in the book and some of the best bits I've listed below:

The name I have given this phenomenon, the Medici effect , comes from the remarkable burst of creativity in 15th century Italy. The medici's were a banking family in Florence who funded creators from a wide range of disciplines. Thanks to this family and a few others like it, sculptors, scientists, poets, philosophers, financiers, painters, and architects converged upon the city of Florence. There they found each other, learned from one another and broke down barriers between disciplines and cultures. Together they forged a new world based on new ideas, what became known as the Renaissance. As a result the city became the epicenter of a creative explosion, one of the most innovative eras in history. The effects of the Medici family can be felt even to this day.

Innovators often tend to be self taught. They tend to be the types that educate themselves intensely. And they often have a broad learning experience, having excelled in one field and learned another. Broad education and self education, then appeared to be 2 keys to learn differently.

Thomas Kuhn points out in his Seminal book the structures of scientific revolutions that almost always the men who achieve fundamental inventions of a new paradigm have been either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they changed.

Forcing a breakdown of associative barriers means directing the minds to take unusual paths while thinking about a situation, issue or problem. One of the most effective ways of accomplishing that is to perform an assumption reversal. By reversing assumptions the mind is encouraged to view a situation from a completely different perspective , clearing the path to the intersection. The intersection is this one place where the different diverse ideas can be scrunched together to create something beautiful.

renaissance man is someone that can see trends and patterns and integrate what he knows. To me the modern renaissance man is curious, interested in different things. You have to be willing to waste time on things that are not directly relevant to your work because you are curious. But then you are able to sometimes unconsciously, integrate them back into your work.

he believes that such insights can come from fields other than just business. for instance he reads close to 100 books a year and none of them are about business.

A few months back a group of engineers were looking for ways to safely and efficiently remove ice from power lines during ice storms but they were stonewalled. They decided to take a thought walk around the hotel. One of the engineers came back with a jar of honey he had purchased in a gift shop. He suggested putting honey pots on top of each pole. He said that this would attract bears. The bears would climb the poles to get the honey and their climate would cause the poles to sway and the ice would vibrate off the wires. Working with the principle of a vibration they got the idea of bringing in helicopters to hover over the lines. There hovering vibrated the ice off the lines.

Charles Darwin after having proposed the groundbreaking theory of evolution , he developed the dead wrong theory of pangenesis, which suggested that acquired traits, such as stronger muscles, could be passed on to offspring. Or look at Sabeer Bathia. He founded the email service Hotmail, which became successful because of a novel marketing device: a signup link sent automatically with each email.

Taking notes in a car is a bit more problematic. Nevertheless some of the best ideas strike us while we are driving alone. Try using a tape recorder. Most important than keeping notebooks handy is actually using them. Getting used to recording ideas, thoughts and insights requires commitment. Once you develop this habit, though, you will wonder how you ever made it through the day without it.

Sunny: a powerful way to galvanise intersectional ideas is to get two people from two different professions to meet and discuss how they can help problems from each others jobs using learnings from their own.

The key to winning is to stay disciplined. Make sure to bet big when you have good cards and stay low when you don't. Because it is all about winning when you win and losing less when you lose.

What does it mean to acknowledge fear? For starters you have to come to terms with what is at stake it admit that you might lose it. Often this means that you must be comfortable enough to know that if everything is lost you can still move on.

[Ash · Rating 3 out of 5]

Summary of main points (contains spoilers?)

This is a book about how to be generate innovative ideas through crossing the intersections between different fields and cultures.

What are the forces that cause these intersections?
1. Movement of people (flow of culture)
2. Scientific discipline
3. Computational power

How can people come across these intersections?
- lower their associative barriers = be able to link unfamiliar elements together so you can think outside-of-the-box more easily without constraint. Expose yourself to different cultures, learn things differently, reverse your assumptions, or rethink in different perspectives (apply the idea to sth else or create constraints).
- combat similar-attraction effect = be more conscious of your biases, stop relying as much on your existing network, and branch out more.
- have an open mindset = diversity can create conflicts, so an open mindset will allow you to learn from others who are different from you, instead of merely deeming it as wrong or inferior.
- produce as many ideas as possible, even the bad ones = the good ones will come at some point during this process. "Quantity of ideas lead to quality of ideas" (96).

Other main arguments:
- What separates a bizarre idea from an actually useful innovative one is that the idea needs to be valuable in some way, and can be realized.
- Education should be less about creating expertise, because expertise can often create barriers on thinking outside of the box. The aim should be to "...learn as many things as possible without getting stuck in a particular way of thinking about those things" (50).
- An improved way of brainstorming = individually brainstorm on our own, share ideas, pass around and build on each other's ideas, then evaluate together.
- Pressure can lead to higher productivity, but not creativity, because limited time requires fast but hasty judgment.
- In order for companies to encourage people to take risks and experience failure without actually aiming for failure (?), a good method is to reward success and failure equally, while punishing inaction.

Personal Notes

Interesting takeaways:
- Dune by Herbert is considered one of the best sci-fi books.
- Eastgate is an example of a building with no A/C in Africa.
- Pokemon card game combined games and collectibles.
- Tubular Bells is an album that combines rock and classical music by Mike Oldfield.

Thoughts on the entire book
This is largely based on personal experience and preferences, but I did not find this book as mind-blowing as some others. Perhaps it is because I have read a couple of the concepts mentioned in the book somewhere else in the past. It also has a lot of stories, which is great, but can be redundant and a bit "preachy". Some of the stuff seems less about practical tactics but more about motivational/inspirational words, which is great, but not really what I was looking for.

One interesting thought that kept popping into my mind throughout the process of reading this book was how it reminded me so much of RISD's foundation year teachings. Several of the methods mentioned in the book (such as cranking out a thousand ideas before getting to a good one) were clearly implemented in RISD's teachings, which I did not get to appreciate until years later. I am very grateful that this book helped me understand a bit more on why colleges like RISD taught less about technical and factual knowledge, and more about how we should expand our ways of thinking without being constrained to a field of expertise. I hope it is not too late for me to rethink the way I learn and work as a designer.

And surprisingly, in 2020 I actually started reading self-help books (without even realizing it). Apparently this book is categorized as a self-help book, along with my current 2020 favorite How to Read a Book. I should reconsider my past criticism on this genre, as I did not realize that this genre can be so practical and not only about solving mundane personal problems.

[Lídia · Rating 4 out of 5]

SUMMARY
The book bases on how to create innovation through the asociation of diferent fields. Frans Johansson named the book after a banking family from Florence, Italy who funded creators in the fifteenth-century that had a remarkable brust of creativity when they found each other in the Tuscane city and there they learned frome one another braking barrirers between disciplines and cultures.
The Interection is where different fields meet. Fields are made of concepts, words with sustainable meanings, and as more concepts of a field you undersantd more in deep you will know about the field. Ideas are made of the relation of multiple concepts, there are two types of ideas directional and intesectional. The first ones are ideas within one field, these are the common ideas that we have, when talking with a person we usually stick to only one field and therefore our mind only relationates concepts within the same field. Intersectional ideas are basicly when we relationate two concepts from different fields: imgagine a plate and a car wheel, both are round, right, so why don’t we eat from a car wheel?
Creative ideas are innovation when they are valuable and realized. Intresection is rised by three forces:
1. MovementofPeople,exampleaCherokeewrittenlanguagewascreatedbyoneofhis members who had been in another society and when he came back develop an asociation between silabes sounds and signs.
2. ConvergenceofScience,theycreatedfishingcordbycombingspidersnetandgoatmilk becaus they saw this two ingredients had resistence properties.
3. LeapofComputation:whendreamworksandpixarstartedusingcomputrestoanimate films giving crators more time to develop creative skills rather that coping the same image multiple time, this technology advancement save time and gained creativity in the story and it’s pictures motions.
The Medici Effect is created when our asociative barriers fall down. Asociative barriers are the asumptions we make about something because the relation the concepts spoken are within a field. The three keys to make barriers fall are cultural diversity (class, gender, ethnic, profession), learn differently (change the rules of a game, for example in the ‘escondite’ instead of the one counting need to find the rest, the group counts and one hide and the others when find him need to stay hide with him), and reverse assumptions (restaurants with no menus or a restaurant that does not serve food). To fully understand something needs to be view from at least three different prespectives: 1. Original point of view, 2. Apply the idea to something or someone else, 3. Create constrains.

APROPIATION
The book Fish! is also related, since they intersect the shopping field with playing on the story of the succesful market fish, and how everyone like going shopping there and not only for shopping but just to spend lunch.
The best way to be a Purple Cow is by creating it through the Medici Effect, when you combien the two books, by having an innovative product and also a diferentiative value, you have a bestseller, but it needs to be genuine to work out.
The first step of Design Thinking is listing out passions, problems, and trends, and when we relationate the concepst of each category we are creating ideas, most of them intersectional, but why we can’t make the medici effect is that we don’t know enough of at least one of the fields to interconnectate them and create innovation.

[Lídia · Rating 4 out of 5]

SUMMARY
The book bases on how to create innovation through the asociation of diferent fields. Frans Johansson named the book after a banking family from Florence, Italy who funded creators in the fifteenth-century that had a remarkable brust of creativity when they found each other in the Tuscane city and there they learned frome one another braking barrirers between disciplines and cultures.
The Interection is where different fields meet. Fields are made of concepts, words with sustainable meanings, and as more concepts of a field you undersantd more in deep you will know about the field. Ideas are made of the relation of multiple concepts, there are two types of ideas directional and intesectional. The first ones are ideas within one field, these are the common ideas that we have, when talking with a person we usually stick to only one field and therefore our mind only relationates concepts within the same field. Intersectional ideas are basicly when we relationate two concepts from different fields: imgagine a plate and a car wheel, both are round, right, so why don’t we eat from a car wheel?
Creative ideas are innovation when they are valuable and realized. Intresection is rised by three forces:
1. MovementofPeople,exampleaCherokeewrittenlanguagewascreatedbyoneofhis members who had been in another society and when he came back develop an asociation between silabes sounds and signs.
2. ConvergenceofScience,theycreatedfishingcordbycombingspidersnetandgoatmilk becaus they saw this two ingredients had resistence properties.
3. LeapofComputation:whendreamworksandpixarstartedusingcomputrestoanimate films giving crators more time to develop creative skills rather that coping the same image multiple time, this technology advancement save time and gained creativity in the story and it’s pictures motions.
The Medici Effect is created when our asociative barriers fall down. Asociative barriers are the asumptions we make about something because the relation the concepts spoken are within a field. The three keys to make barriers fall are cultural diversity (class, gender, ethnic, profession), learn differently (change the rules of a game, for example in the ‘escondite’ instead of the one counting need to find the rest, the group counts and one hide and the others when find him need to stay hide with him), and reverse assumptions (restaurants with no menus or a restaurant that does not serve food). To fully understand something needs to be view from at least three different prespectives: 1. Original point of view, 2. Apply the idea to something or someone else, 3. Create constrains.

APROPIATION
The book Fish! is also related, since they intersect the shopping field with playing on the story of the succesful market fish, and how everyone like going shopping there and not only for shopping but just to spend lunch.
The best way to be a Purple Cow is by creating it through the Medici Effect, when you combien the two books, by having an innovative product and also a diferentiative value, you have a bestseller, but it needs to be genuine to work out.
The first step of Design Thinking is listing out passions, problems, and trends, and when we relationate the concepst of each category we are creating ideas, most of them intersectional, but why we can’t make the medici effect is that we don’t know enough of at least one of the fields to interconnectate them and create innovation.

[Lídia · Rating 4 out of 5]

SUMMARY
The book bases on how to create innovation through the asociation of diferent fields. Frans Johansson named the book after a banking family from Florence, Italy who funded creators in the fifteenth-century that had a remarkable brust of creativity when they found each other in the Tuscane city and there they learned frome one another braking barrirers between disciplines and cultures.
The Interection is where different fields meet. Fields are made of concepts, words with sustainable meanings, and as more concepts of a field you undersantd more in deep you will know about the field. Ideas are made of the relation of multiple concepts, there are two types of ideas directional and intesectional. The first ones are ideas within one field, these are the common ideas that we have, when talking with a person we usually stick to only one field and therefore our mind only relationates concepts within the same field. Intersectional ideas are basicly when we relationate two concepts from different fields: imgagine a plate and a car wheel, both are round, right, so why don’t we eat from a car wheel?
Creative ideas are innovation when they are valuable and realized. Intresection is rised by three forces:
1. MovementofPeople,exampleaCherokeewrittenlanguagewascreatedbyoneofhis members who had been in another society and when he came back develop an asociation between silabes sounds and signs.
2. ConvergenceofScience,theycreatedfishingcordbycombingspidersnetandgoatmilk becaus they saw this two ingredients had resistence properties.
3. LeapofComputation:whendreamworksandpixarstartedusingcomputrestoanimate films giving crators more time to develop creative skills rather that coping the same image multiple time, this technology advancement save time and gained creativity in the story and it’s pictures motions.
The Medici Effect is created when our asociative barriers fall down. Asociative barriers are the asumptions we make about something because the relation the concepts spoken are within a field. The three keys to make barriers fall are cultural diversity (class, gender, ethnic, profession), learn differently (change the rules of a game, for example in the ‘escondite’ instead of the one counting need to find the rest, the group counts and one hide and the others when find him need to stay hide with him), and reverse assumptions (restaurants with no menus or a restaurant that does not serve food). To fully understand something needs to be view from at least three different prespectives: 1. Original point of view, 2. Apply the idea to something or someone else, 3. Create constrains.

APROPIATION
The book Fish! is also related, since they intersect the shopping field with playing on the story of the succesful market fish, and how everyone like going shopping there and not only for shopping but just to spend lunch.
The best way to be a Purple Cow is by creating it through the Medici Effect, when you combien the two books, by having an innovative product and also a diferentiative value, you have a bestseller, but it needs to be genuine to work out.
The first step of Design Thinking is listing out passions, problems, and trends, and when we relationate the concepst of each category we are creating ideas, most of them intersectional, but why we can’t make the medici effect is that we don’t know enough of at least one of the fields to interconnectate them and create innovation.

[Walter Sylesh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this up as a suggestion from Ivette Cano, one of my instructors at the Prometheus Fellowship who's also handling the project management training this semester. She recommended this as a book that inspires one to get new ideas and also the most interesting way to come up with spectacular project pitches.

Her well-intentioned recommendation got me curious enough to check this book out and blaze through it in one sitting. Apart from giving me the satisfaction of a completed book, here's what I think.

The book is obviously dated but the ideas are fresh for picking. It contains interesting anecdotes from previous generation greats such as Richard Branson among others. The main message is to look for brilliant ideas at intersections of multiple disciplines and sciences instead of unidirectional and predictable specialisations.

It urges the reader to step out from the sidewalks and jump right into the world of Intersections. Here's where the regular and the traditional are out of the window and only persistence, risk-taking and ability to blend the best of all worlds to innovate help move the world forward. It also implores us to lower our associative barriers in order to come up with interesting combinations of ideas that can propel the scope of successful and useful ideas and create new fields with fresh possibilities.

While the term "intersectionality" today has contorted meanings in a sociological and political sense, the author in this 2004 book means "Intersectional" to be more on the lines of the "multidisciplinary", the "unknown" and the discovery of "new frontiers". Here are anecdotes of innovators like Richard Garfield, Samuelsson, Shakira, Richard Branson who took the risks to blend multiple disciplines or fields together to create winning combinations for the human society. Oftentimes, the author emphasises on the rather stark differences between two concepts from unrelated fields and how they were fused together to create innovations that today seem intuitive and obvious such as the link between violence prevention and healthcare .

The last few sections offer a few tips on how one can break the mental barrier and tendency to grow within one's own sphere of expertise in predictable paths. They offer lessons on risk-taking, innovation and overcoming the fear of failure that can keep one stagnant.

Overall it's a great book that extolls the virtues of innovation, free-markets, free-movement of ideas and people, and risk-taking in changing the world as I know it. It left me upbeat and all the more wiser, even if it only quoted a few old anecdotes, conventional neuroscience and an idea that's already become mainstream in today's world.

[Francisco García Pimentel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frankómetro: 89%
Pudo haberse llamado: Papalote museo del niño
Lo recomienda: La Monalisa
Léelo si te gusta: Where good ideas come from, de Steve Johnson.
******
Hace un par de días compartimos el libro de El Impulso Creativo de Goleman, que abordaba el fenómeno de la creatividad desde los procesos inmanentes de la mente humana. Quizás por completar, pero sobre todo por coincidencia (¿o no?), llegó a mis manos otro libro sobre el mismo tema: El Efecto Medici, que estudia los mecanismos externos que dan lugar a las grandes ideas.

Si es verdad que todos tenemos un gran potencial creativo, la experiencia nos muestra que hay momentos y lugares en la historia en donde las mareas creativas parecen tener una explosión palpable. La Florencia del renacimiento (por eso el nombre: efecto Médici), la Francia de la Ilustración, o Silicon Valley a principios de siglo, parecen ser lugares “mágicos” para el desarrollo de innovaciones, nuevas ideas y grandes cambios tecnológicos y sociales.

Existen también empresas más creativas e innovadoras: Disney, Pixar, Virgin, Google. ¿Cómo es que se crean estos espacios en donde la creatividad fluye con tanta energía, y que producen resultados tan extraordinarios?
Johansson explora las razones que operan en torno a estos puntos de intersección que son el caldo de cultivo de las empresas creativas, y planea diversos parámetros que parecen tener correlación directa con la creatividad, tales como la intersección de disciplinas, la reiteración de ideas, los tiempos de incubación, el derecho a equivocarse, la generación de guías, la recolección de notas, los incentivos, los equipos creativos, la cantidad y la calidad de las ocurrencias y las tormentas rediseñadas.

Todo esto resulta en un libro interesantísimo, plagado de historias y ejemplos, que no cesa de inculcar en el alma la llama de la creatividad y la innovación. Un libro muy subrayable que te abre muchas nuevas puertas.

Igual, es un gran libro que no puede faltar en biblioteca de curiosos, creativos y emprendedores.

[Lídia · Rating 4 out of 5]

SUMMARY
The book bases on how to create innovation through the asociation of diferent fields. Frans Johansson named the book after a banking family from Florence, Italy who funded creators in the fifteenth-century that had a remarkable brust of creativity when they found each other in the Tuscane city and there they learned frome one another braking barrirers between disciplines and cultures.
The Interection is where different fields meet. Fields are made of concepts, words with sustainable meanings, and as more concepts of a field you undersantd more in deep you will know about the field. Ideas are made of the relation of multiple concepts, there are two types of ideas directional and intesectional. The first ones are ideas within one field, these are the common ideas that we have, when talking with a person we usually stick to only one field and therefore our mind only relationates concepts within the same field. Intersectional ideas are basicly when we relationate two concepts from different fields: imgagine a plate and a car wheel, both are round, right, so why don’t we eat from a car wheel?
Creative ideas are innovation when they are valuable and realized. Intresection is rised by three forces:
1. MovementofPeople,exampleaCherokeewrittenlanguagewascreatedbyoneofhis members who had been in another society and when he came back develop an asociation between silabes sounds and signs.
2. ConvergenceofScience,theycreatedfishingcordbycombingspidersnetandgoatmilk becaus they saw this two ingredients had resistence properties.
3. LeapofComputation:whendreamworksandpixarstartedusingcomputrestoanimate films giving crators more time to develop creative skills rather that coping the same image multiple time, this technology advancement save time and gained creativity in the story and it’s pictures motions.
The Medici Effect is created when our asociative barriers fall down. Asociative barriers are the asumptions we make about something because the relation the concepts spoken are within a field. The three keys to make barriers fall are cultural diversity (class, gender, ethnic, profession), learn differently (change the rules of a game, for example in the ‘escondite’ instead of the one counting need to find the rest, the group counts and one hide and the others when find him need to stay hide with him), and reverse assumptions (restaurants with no menus or a restaurant that does not serve food). To fully understand something needs to be view from at least three different prespectives: 1. Original point of view, 2. Apply the idea to something or someone else, 3. Create constrains.

APROPIATION
The book Fish! is also related, since they intersect the shopping field with playing on the story of the succesful market fish, and how everyone like going shopping there and not only for shopping but just to spend lunch.
The best way to be a Purple Cow is by creating it through the Medici Effect, when you combien the two books, by having an innovative product and also a diferentiative value, you have a bestseller, but it needs to be genuine to work out.
The first step of Design Thinking is listing out passions, problems, and trends, and when we relationate the concepst of each category we are creating ideas, most of them intersectional, but why we can’t make the medici effect is that we don’t know enough of at least one of the fields to interconnectate them and create innovation.

Merged review:

SUMMARY
The book bases on how to create innovation through the asociation of diferent fields. Frans Johansson named the book after a banking family from Florence, Italy who funded creators in the fifteenth-century that had a remarkable brust of creativity when they found each other in the Tuscane city and there they learned frome one another braking barrirers between disciplines and cultures.
The Interection is where different fields meet. Fields are made of concepts, words with sustainable meanings, and as more concepts of a field you undersantd more in deep you will know about the field. Ideas are made of the relation of multiple concepts, there are two types of ideas directional and intesectional. The first ones are ideas within one field, these are the common ideas that we have, when talking with a person we usually stick to only one field and therefore our mind only relationates concepts within the same field. Intersectional ideas are basicly when we relationate two concepts from different fields: imgagine a plate and a car wheel, both are round, right, so why don’t we eat from a car wheel?
Creative ideas are innovation when they are valuable and realized. Intresection is rised by three forces:
1. MovementofPeople,exampleaCherokeewrittenlanguagewascreatedbyoneofhis members who had been in another society and when he came back develop an asociation between silabes sounds and signs.
2. ConvergenceofScience,theycreatedfishingcordbycombingspidersnetandgoatmilk becaus they saw this two ingredients had resistence properties.
3. LeapofComputation:whendreamworksandpixarstartedusingcomputrestoanimate films giving crators more time to develop creative skills rather that coping the same image multiple time, this technology advancement save time and gained creativity in the story and it’s pictures motions.
The Medici Effect is created when our asociative barriers fall down. Asociative barriers are the asumptions we make about something because the relation the concepts spoken are within a field. The three keys to make barriers fall are cultural diversity (class, gender, ethnic, profession), learn differently (change the rules of a game, for example in the ‘escondite’ instead of the one counting need to find the rest, the group counts and one hide and the others when find him need to stay hide with him), and reverse assumptions (restaurants with no menus or a restaurant that does not serve food). To fully understand something needs to be view from at least three different prespectives: 1. Original point of view, 2. Apply the idea to something or someone else, 3. Create constrains.

APROPIATION
The book Fish! is also related, since they intersect the shopping field with playing on the story of the succesful market fish, and how everyone like going shopping there and not only for shopping but just to spend lunch.
The best way to be a Purple Cow is by creating it through the Medici Effect, when you combien the two books, by having an innovative product and also a diferentiative value, you have a bestseller, but it needs to be genuine to work out.
The first step of Design Thinking is listing out passions, problems, and trends, and when we relationate the concepst of each category we are creating ideas, most of them intersectional, but why we can’t make the medici effect is that we don’t know enough of at least one of the fields to interconnectate them and create innovation.