Episode 22 – Medici Effect on How Innovation lies at the intersection of Ideas, fields and cultures

The Medici Effect : What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation

Diversity drives innovation – We’ll today talk about how break through insights lies at the intersection of ideas, fields and cultures

Can you imagine what safety engineering can learn from insects?

Have you seen images of locusts fly in swarms? Have you ever wondered how they do so without colliding with each other? Some scientists did. They discovered the African locust has a unique internal radar system composed of a giant movement detector behind the eyes. The visual input is instantly transmitted to the insect’s wing nerve cells – seemingly bypassing the brain. The detector releases bursts of energy when the locust is on a collision course, which allows it to move out of the way quickly.
This lead to Volvo Safety divisions building collusion safety based on how the locust’s radar system to develop new technology to cut down on road traffic accidents.

What comes across through this examples – is that creativity and innovation is driven through diversity and the cross fertilization of fields.

In the Medici effect, owes its name to the rich banker family which had a lot of influence in Italy in the 15 century and unleashed an explosion of creativity during this period, ultimately laying the foundation for Renaissance

Johansson calls working at the intersection of disciplines that spurs creativity and innovation as the Medici Effect.

Quantity of ideas increases the quality of ideas.

1. Produce as many ideas as possible
2. Produce ideas as wild as possible
3. Build upon each other’s ideas
4. Avoid passing judgement on ideas

Create new ideas

Through exposing to a range of cultures, teach yourself many different things, reverse your assumptions, and take on multiple perspectives of a specific situation.

How many times can one discover a new continent

The point he is trying to make is that there is only so much one can learn from within a field. The foundational framework across most disciplines are already discovered – the world, moving ahead, he says lies in the inter disciplinary fields

“Leonardo da Vinci, the defining Renaissance man and perhaps the greatest intersectionalist of all times, believed that in order to fully understand something one needed to view it from at least three different perspectives”

― Frans Johansson, Medici Effect: What You Can Learn from Elephants and Epidemics