Archive for October, 2009

On September 24^th we had The Medici Experience in San Jose, CA. The event was a huge success, more so than I could have hoped for (see video below). This time the City of San Jose hosted the Medici Experience and some 140 people filled the room to the brink – there were people on a waiting list even.

Teams from companies, city departments, start-ups and non-profits joined us for an incredibly immersive innovation experience. The event is a mix of a live performance by me and exercises that scale beautifully…intense and tons of fun!  I start with a good 30 min or so of presenting the basic points of The Medici Effect. After that the teams had to create this effect for themselves.

First they mapped out their existing resources as a base for future innovation –it  is about using your assets in new combinations. After that they sought ideas from other industries, cultures, business models, products etc etc. Many teams developed more than 30 ideas and many of those ideas were very, very good.

But we forced them to choose one: greatest impact x easiest to execute. Then they had to connect with people in the room, over and over, making their team’s idea better. It was incredible to see the people connect with each other and in a matter of minutes completely add a whole new perspective on what they were working on. There! In one corner a librarian surprises a tech executive with how to develop their product – the executive would never have asked her, but here serendipity reigns. This happened hundreds of times as people sought out the Intersection.

The afternoon was spent on figuring out how to make the idea happen. The teams pursued this by defining their idea’s the smallest executable unit and thinking about how to reward mistakes – when few organizations would willingly allow that to happen. By the time people were designing an immediate execution plan they were getting on the phones.

I was exhausted; of course, it had been 12 non-stop hours since I woke up. Needed to eat…oh that adrenaline dissipating!

Both Trinidad and San Jose is actually a soft-launch for a world-wide tour of Medici Experiences so stay tuned as we will soon announce the next city! Check out the video below or here.

Here are some cool, recent intersectional ideas and stories that we have come across.

1. Butterfly wings and solar cells! Researchers have developed a technique that recreates biological structures on a nano scale. In nature, nano-sized structures give many insects their iridescent appearance, in which their colors appear metallic or seem to change depending on the viewing angle. http://tiny.cc/edXws

2. Piano + staircase…..Clever VW marketing campaign: http://bit.ly/QFAZv

3. Solar panes + roof tiles. Solar panes made out of glass…heats up an underlying sheet and easily integrates into a buildings standard energy solution. Very cool. http://www.soltechenergy.com/site/page.php?pg=78&menu=12

Wired has a great short piece on how the winning team of the Netflix $1 million challenge came up with their solution. The challenge was to improve Netflix’s search and rating system by 10% – something that took years (and he winners own by mere minutes, too). Several key Medici Effect rules stand out:

1. New ideas are generated when you combine existing ideas

“The top two teams beat the challenge by combining teams and their algorithms into more complex algorithms incorporating everybody’s work.”

2. But not all idea combinations are created equal – the more unusual or unlikely the combination the more likely that the idea is innovative

“But something else happened that wasn’t entirely expected: Teams that had it basically wrong — but for a few good ideas — made the difference when combined with teams which had it basically right, but couldn’t close the deal on their own.

…Ironically, the most outlying approaches — the ones farthest away from the mainstream way to solve a given problem — proved most helpful towards the end of the contest, as the teams neared the summit.”

3. The more ideas you come up with and decide to pursue (whether completely different ideas or even iterations of prototypes) the higher the likelihood that you will be innovative.

“The more people joined, the more the resulting team’s score would increase.”

Another 4^th rule that applies at the Intersection, that diverse teams come up with more ideas could not be gleaned from the piece but I have no doubt this was the case. Congratulations to the BellKor team!