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

by Frans Johansson (Author) "IN THE SPRING OF 2002, a team of researchers at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, conducted a remarkable experiment ..." (more)

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Product details

Hardcover: 207 pages
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press (1 Sep 2004)
Language English
ISBN-10: 1591391865
ISBN-13: 978-1591391869
Product Dimensions: 24.1 x 16.3 x 2.5 cm

Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 93,274 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
Popular in these categories:
#43 in Books > Business, Finance & Law > Management > Management Skills > Creativity
#74 in Books > Business, Finance & Law > Management > Strategy

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Product Description

The Financial Times, September 23, 2004

...there is a good deal that managers can draw from this collection of
ideas. - From the Hardcover edition
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description

Innovation is an evergreen topic because it is such an essential ingredient for successful growth—and this book provides a new and fascinating perspective on how new innovations can best be found and developed

Managers from all kinds of companies will find this book of interest. This book is so well written and is filled with such engaging examples that we expect it to break out beyond a business audience to general readers.

It is similar to The Tipping Point in terms of tone, readability, and rich, interesting stories, which show how innovative ideas were born in intersections that combined arenas as diverse as card games and sky rises, Palm Pilots and carrots, airplanes and cookies, ants and truck drivers.

Offers practical strategies anyone can use to develop novel new ideas big and small, in all areas of life and work.

Note: The book’s title refers to an explosion of creativity that occurred in Florence during the Renaissance, when the Medici banking family funded creators from many different disciplines to come together to debate, discuss, and discover new ideas. The book is about how any of us can create our own “Medici effects” using the concept of “the intersection”

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Inside This Book (Learn More)

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IN THE SPRING OF 2002, a team of researchers at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, conducted a remarkable experiment. Read the first page

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Special Place Where "Extraordinary Ideas" Are Born, 2 Jun 2006

By	Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

As Johansson carefully explains, this book is really not about the Medici family, although the community of creative people its members funded exemplifies all manner of exciting possibilities for collaborative productivity; nor is it really a "business book," although Johansson asserts -- and I wholly agree -- that there are lessons to be learned from that community which can be of substantial value to organizations in the 21st century. For example, to corporations which rely on multi-lingual communications and multi-disciplinary initiatives to compete successfully in a global marketplace.

So, what is this book's core concept? The idea behind it is simple: "When you step into an intersection of fields, disciplines, or cultures, you can combine existing concepts into a large number of extraordinary ideas."

Johansson achieves three specific objectives: He explains what, exactly, "the Intersection is and why we can expect to see a lot more of it in the future"; next, he explains "why stepping into the Intersection creates the Medici Effect"; finally, he outlines "the unique challenges we face when executing intersectional ideas and how we can overcome those challenges." With regard to the third objective, I am again reminded of a passage in Leading Change where Jim O'Toole observes that there are always unique and formidable challenges when threatening what he characterizes as "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom."

In Part One, Johansson focuses on the Intersection which, for most of us, offers the best environment in which to innovate. Next, he explains how to create the Medici Effect within that creative and collaborative environment. Then in Part Three, he offers specific suggestions as to HOW to make intersectional ideas happen. I share Johansson's faith in what an Intersection makes possible, no matter who is involved, no matter where that Intersection may be located. I also agree with him that 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 people who can break down barriers and stay motivated through failures." There are countless examples of groups whose talented members created the Medici Effect. For example, the research laboratory which Thomas Edison established for himself and his associates in Menlo Park (NJ) in 1876; he relocated it to West Orange (NJ) in 1883.

Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman examine more recent examples in their book, Creating Genius: the Disney studios which produced so many animation classics; Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) which developed the first personal computer; Apple Computer which then took it to market; in the so-called "War Room" which helped to elect Bill Clinton President in 1992; the so-called "Skunk Works" where so many of Lockheed's greatest designs were formulated; Black Mountain College which "wasn't simply a place where creative collaboration took place" for the artists in residence from 1933 to 1956, "it was about creative collaboration"; and Los Alamos (NM) and the University of Chicago where the Manhattan Project eventually produced a new weapon called "the Gadget."

Although the brief excerpt which follows is taken from Johansson's Introduction, it serves as an appropriate conclusion to my brief commentary: "We, too, can create the Medici Effect. We can ignite the explosion of extraordinary ideas and take advantage of its individuals, as teams, and as organizations. We can do it by bringing together different disciplines and cultures and searching for places where they connect. [begin italics] The Medici Effect [end italics] will show you how to find such intersectional ideas and make them happen. This book is not about the Renaissance era, nor is it about the the Medici family. Rather, it is about those elements that made that era possible. It is about what happens when you step into an intersection of different disciplines and cultures, and bring the ideas you find there to life."

If there is another book published in recent years which is more intellectually stimulating than this one, I have not as yet read it.

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3.0 out of 5 stars One approach, but not necessarily the right one for all, 20 Mar 2005

By	"innovaro" - See all my reviews

Based on the premise that the most significant innovations occur at the intersection of ideas and concepts, this consultant authored book adopts the parallel of the creativity of the Medici banking family in Renaissance Italy to build another 'how to' approach for breakthrough innovation. Mixing Darwin, Clayton Christensen and even Mike Oldfield to illustrate the context, it uses PDAs, unmanned aerial vehicles, Virgin Atlantic and Vertex as examples of historical intersectional innovation, and then offers advice on how to improve innovation performance through following a codified process focused on exploring the key intersections that impact the markets and technology spaces in which firms operate. This is a good overview of one approach that may well work for some, but may equally not be right for all.

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4.0 out of 5 stars An intelligent, challenging (and cleverly sold) exploration of the conditions that create dramatic innovation, 31 Oct 2009

By	Jonathan Gifford (Oxford, UK) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The central notion of the Medici Effect is compelling, useful and inspiring. The book argues that real innovation happens when different cultures, ideas and disciplines come together to spark off new and unprecedented solutions. It also proposes entirely sensible ways of improving the chances of this happening: create environments where people from different backgrounds are encouraged to interact and exchange ideas; try to break away from built-in associations that inform our view of the likely future; encourage radical thinking (try exploring 'reverse' scenarios - a restaurant should have no menus, not charge money for food and/or nor serve food at all: discuss); try to break away from your existing 'value network', because this is set up to encourage and reward success along familiar lines; have as many ideas as possible - great innovators have as many failures as the rest of us, but the sheer profusion of their new ideas greatly increases their chance of having the occasional big success.
Johansson gives several examples of innovators who pulled together apparently unrelated threads of thought into one new radical solution - a telecommunications engineer becomes intrigued by the biological systems that allow a colony of insects to find the most efficient route to a source of food; he leaves his job to study insects and develops a brilliant new routing solution for information technology.
The Medici Effect encourages us to break away from our entrenched ways of thinking to look for the genuinely radical solutions that may change our lives. It reminds us that the greatest breakthroughs in most fields have been made by people who see things with fresh eyes.
Johanssen possibly oversells his ideas with some (entirely understandable and successful) marketing hype. The book is called The Medici Effect because renaissance Florence, governed in effect by the wealthy Medici banking family, produced a great flourishing of ideas brought about - so the theory goes - by the bringing together of brilliant people in many spheres of art, culture and enterprise. Well yes, but political stability, wealth and patronage also had a great deal to do with it.
Johanssen has turned his big idea into what is, in effect, a brand: the Intersection - an idea (or is it a place?) so significant that it has its own capital letter. And some of the examples given are perhaps not good examples of the Intersection after all, but might rather reflect good, old-fashioned 1+1=2 kind of thinking. Like the medic who realised that the young man whose knife wound she had just stitched up was leaving the emergency ward in search of revenge. Should heath care operatives get involved in violence prevention? The medic in question drove through the structural changes to join up medicine and policing, which colleagues believed were different disciplines. It's impressive - but is it really the Intersection?
Calling an anlaysis the Intersection or The Medici Effect doesn't necessarily make it any more real or usable - but, then again, what the hell? A clever piece of writing with real substance at its heart, The Medici Effect deserves its success.

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5.0 out of 5 stars An innovative book with new perspectives
The connection of innovation and diversity appears to be obvious to some extend: You need significantly different perspectives and skills in order to create something... Read more

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