The Medici Effect

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

To discover breakthrough new ideas, innovators often step into the intersection. At the intersection of fields, disciplines, or cultures, they combine existing concepts into a large number of extraordinary new ideas. Author and consultant Frans Johansson has named this phenomenon “The Medici Effect,” which comes from a remarkable burst of creativity in 15th 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 learned from each other and broke down barriers between disciplines and cultures. Together they forged a world of new ideas -- what became known as the Renaissance.

As an individual, as part of a team, or as the leader of an organization, you can also take advantage of the Medici Effect. You can do it by bringing together different disciplines and cultures, and then searching for the places where they connect. In the next 45 minutes, you will discover how to find such intersectional ideas and make them happen. You will also learn how to:

• Break down barriers and view problems in new ways;
• Randomly, but purposefully, combine diverse concepts;
• Walk away from familiar networks and venture into the unknown; and
• Execute beyond failures to make new ideas happen at the intersection.