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The Medici Effect: Breakthrough Insights at the Intersection of Ideas, Concepts, and Cultures (精装)
by Frans Johansson
| Category:
Innovation, Growth strategy, Business |
| Market price: ¥ 348.00
MSL price:
¥ 338.00
[ Shop incentives ]
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| Stock:
Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
Using the framework of intersections as a channel for generating new ideas, The Medici Effect explains and inspires innovation in an entertaining way. |
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AllReviews |
1 Total 1 pages 9 items |
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Clay Christensen (author of The Innovator's Dilemma, Professor Harvard Business School) (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-28 00:00>
The Medici Effect is one of the most insightful books about managing innovation I have ever read. Its assertion that breakthrough insights occur at novel intersections is an enduring principle of creativity that should guide innovators in every field. |
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Dr. James Garvin (Chief Scientist, NASA Mars Exploration Program) (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-28 00:00>
As I look at the exploration of Mars through the lens The Medici Effect offers, I see pathways ahead that were previously invisible, and possibilities that we must consider. Any book that has this effect on anyone is far more than a good read. Let the sleeper awake! |
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Gil Amelio (Former CEO, Apple Computers & National Semiconductor) (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-28 00:00>
Diversity in ideas and experiences breeds the remarkable fruit of invention. In The Medici Effect, Johansson has brought this simple notion to us in a way that is entertaining, informative and very valuable. Drop what you're doing and read it! |
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Gary Moore SVP (Advanced Services, Cisco Systems, Inc.) (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-28 00:00>
This is an amazing story, well told and entertaining. More importantly it's a major breakthrough in thinking that can accelerate creativity for those who invest the time to read it and learn from it. The timing of The Medici Effect could not be better. |
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Cathy Goodwin (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-28 00:00>
Medici Effect opens slowly and at first I was disappointed: just another book of business successes. But as I began taking notes, I realized Frans Johansson really has a new message for all of us.
I recommend skimming the first chapters to get to the second part of the book, and then going back to understand application of principles. The heart of the book is about the definition of intersectional innovation and the conditions that must exist for breakthroughs to happen - a combination of individual qualities, environmental support, luck and perseverance.
Perhaps the most helpful, most widely applicable guidelines involve planning for failure and, elatedly, moving from quantity to quality. Prolific authors, artists and business people tend to be successful. They might discard a dozen "bad" ideas to come to two or three successes. So we should reward people for actions, not just success. The only true failure is failure to act.
I also liked Johansson's discussion of risk, especially the notion of "risk homeostasis." If we take risks in one area, we compensate by avoiding risks in another. And a false sense of security can lead to senseless risk-taking.
Johansson's examples make fascinating reader and probably helped sell the book. But I couldn't help thinking that he offers little hope to the majority of people who find themselves in environments where they are forced to specialize. Risk-taking and diversity of experience tend to be discouraged and in fact we tend to disparage what I call the "winding road" career path. Richard Branson is an innovator; on a lesser scale, he'd be a rolling stone.
Johansson emphasizes that underlying diversity, most people have a core competence where they've developed a solid expertise. I think that point has to be addressed, along with the need for a social antenna that allows innovators to find a supportive arena. If you're too maverick, you're dismissed; too conformist, you're not innovating. Where's the balance?
For example, Orit Dagiesh, the Bain consultant, must have paid lots of dues to reach her position. And while Johansson says she defies the consultant stereotype, she does so in a direction that enhances her femininity, with high heels and jewelry. If she'd been more casual or sporty, she might not have been taken seriously. Attractiveness pays, especially for women.
After reading this book, I began to see other examples of intersectional innovation. Natalie Goldberg's first book, Writing Down the Bones, mixed Zen Buddhism with writing.
And Herminia Ibarra's Working Identity argues for creating new networks to make meaningful career changes.
If I were teaching an MBA course in marketing, strategy or product planning, I'd recommend this book. And I'd recommend this book as a gift to anyone interested in business ideas. Those who liked Malcolm Gladwell's book, The Tipping Point (which Johansson discusses) will like The Medici Effect too. |
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Chris Yeh (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-28 00:00>
Let me preface my review by saying that I am definitely biased. The author is an old friend from my business school days, and I have admired him and his work for years. However, I believe that my knowledge of Frans Johansson and his personality make me the perfect person to review this book.
What makes The Medici Effect so special is the way in which it introduces corporate fuddy-duddies like me to a constellation of the world's most innovative people. I can go down to the local Barnes & Noble and pick out 50 books that talk about traditional business role models ranging from Jeff Bezos to Sandy Weill. Those stories are told all the time.
The Medici Effect, on the other hand, introduces you to people like superchef Marcus Samuelsson and Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic: The Gathering, the best-selling card game of all time. These are stories that you and I would probably never otherwise read. Yet Johansson does a masterful job of telling the stories, analyzing what allowed this people to innovate, and setting it in a business context.
This isn't just another business book. It doesn't give you a list of the 7 Effective Laws Of Crossing My Rich Dad's Cheese and a link to the author's consulting practice. This book shows you a completely different perspective on the world, a perspective which, if combined with your conventional business savvy, represents a potentially fruitful intersection of ideas.
Steve Jobs commanded us to "Think Different." That's easier said than done. "The Medici Effect" can help you think different, and that puts it ahead of 99.9% of the other business books on the bestseller lists. |
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Chunk Frey (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-28 00:00>
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 Intersection 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.
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. |
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L. Collier (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-28 00:00>
Medici Effect is a good read that leads you into a journey of how innovation really occurs. It is the intersection of different fields, cultures, discplines, activities, people, etc. that leads you to a new direction for whatever problem that you are trying to solve. It strives to tie it all together in the end with the idea that you have to know what the problem is that you are trying to solve, seek out different experiences, people, etc. to give you new ideas to put together with the ideas that you already have in your head and voila - in 1 month to 8 years or more - an answer to the problem that you are trying to solve may happen. It is not a book about process - it is a book about the journey that may lead you to the solution that you are seeking. |
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John Hwung (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-28 00:00>
The title of the book is very grand. However, the content of the book is far inferior to the title. I was expecting the concepts or ideas that would bring about splendors in philosophy, art and science in great magnitudes just like what took place in Renaissance, but instead the author just filled the pages mostly with small and insignificant examples and stories.
This is just a book on creativity. Its significance is not as big as the recent book, "A whole new mind," or older books such as "At work with Edison." It would be much better if the author can focus his study on how Renaissance came about and on how to replicate or recreate the favorable environment and fertile ground for bringing about another Renaissance on a comparable or even greater scale.
The biggest flaw of this book is that even though the main thesis of the book is on many people from single-disciplinary background coming together to create something multidisciplinary, most of the examples in the book are about single individuals having multidisciplinary abilities creating something new and not at all at the scale of the Renaissance. Besides the brain-reading program and the British code-breaking group mentioned in the book, all other examples were single individuals. So, where is the Medici effect of people coming together?
The second flaw of this book is the assumption that when people come together, a Renaissance will happen. The author is asserting that diversity in ethnicity, geography, age, and gender have a greater chance of coming up with unique ideas. This is wrong. What's needed is diversity of expertise, not just diversity. Diversity of mediocrity does not mean increased chance of creativity.
In summary, I am very disappointed in this book. The title shows great promise, but the author couldn't deliver it. There is much work to be done to understand and promote multidisciplinary creativity. This is one of the very few books that touch on this subject. There is much work to be done in this area. And if we want to create a new Renaissance, then the work becomes monumental!
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1 Total 1 pages 9 items |
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