| The
Medici Effect explores the awesome power
of intersectional innovation
The
Medici Effect: Breakthrough Insights at the Intersection of
Ideas, Concepts & Cultures by Frans Johansson is
a remarkable book that should be on every entrepreneur's bookshelf.
It contains numerous practical insights and strategies that
you can benefit from, no matter what profession or industry
you're working in.
The name of the book refers to the explosion of knowledge,
culture and ideas that flourished during the Renaissance,
fueled by the wealthy Medici family in Italy. It’s an
appropriate metaphor for the explosion of disruptive business
opportunities that we're faced with today.
The Medici Effect is divided into three sections:
Part 1 - The Intersection: The first part
of this book explains what the Intesection is -- a place where
ideas from different field and cultures meet, leading to an
explosion of ideas and possibilities. It also explains the
forces that are creating it and why it's growing in importance.
Johansson also draws some important distinctions between incremental
and disruptive, intersectional ones: "The key difference
between a field and an intersection of fields lies in how
concepts within them are combined," he explains. "If
you operate within a field, you primarily are able to combine
concepts within that particular field, generating ideas that
evolve along a particular direction -- what I call directional
ideas. When you step into the Intersection, you can combine
concepts between multiple fields, generating ideas that leap
in new directions -- what I call intersectional ideas."
Why are intersectional ideas important? Because they have
the potential to create new markets -- what Clayton Christensen
calls disruptive innovations -- and enable the people and
companies who created them to become the leaders in the fields
they created.
Interesting fact: communication technologies that enable collaboration,
like the Internet, are helping to break down the walls between
cultures, professions and fields of knowledge, unleashing
massive opportunities for breakthrough innovation.
Part 2 - Creating The Medici Effect: This
part of the book explains what associative barriers are, and
why it's important that they be low when you're seeking intersectional
ideas. It outlines some practical strategies you can use to
lower your associative barriers, and how to find powerful
combinations of different fields, cultures and areas of knowledge.
It also does a fascinating job of explaining why explorations
at the Intersection tend to yield an exponential increase
in ideas and concepts. In short, Johansson builds a convincing
case for why the Intersection is the most fertile field for
innovation.
Part 3 - Making Intersectional Ideas Happen:
Books about innovation and creativity tend to avoid the subject
of failure, but Johansson dives right in, with page after
page of instructive advice. For example, he outlines how to
regard failures of intersectional ideas, which tend to be
more frequent than those from directional ones. "Successful
execution of intersectional ideas... does not come from planning
for success, but planning for failure. Since we cannot rely
on past experience to devise a perfect execution path, we
must rely on learning what works and what doesn't. Failures
and mistakes during such a process are inevitable."
This section of the book also offers some practical advice
for "succeeding in the face of failure." For example,
when developing a business plan for an intersectional idea,
the author recommends budgeting some funds for trial and error,
and learning from past failures. Perhaps most important of
all, Johansson explains the critical role that courage plays
in entrepreneurial ventures. Your existing network of contacts
may discourage you from pursuing your intersectional idea.
In fact, he says that you will probably have to break away
from your network to pursue intersectional innovation.
Conclusion
In a world filled with me-too, prescriptive tomes on innovation,
The Medici Effect stands apart as a book that covers
fresh ground, and does so in a very engaging way. This book
contains a fascinating, diverse collection of real-world examples
of how to find Intersectional ideas and profit from them.
I give Frans Johansson a lot of credit for going beyond the
"usual suspects" -- notable innovators that everyone
else has written about in their books -- to find some fresh,
new voices to illustrate how to pursue intersectional innovation
in the real-world.
For additional insights and examples of intersectional ideas
from the author, be sure to visit his Stories From the
Intersection Weblog. |
