The Medici Effect Quotes

“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.15”
― Frans Johansson, Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation

“It was not even necessary for people to know how to sing to be considered rock musicians. Bob Dylan had no clue, but that did not stop him from becoming one of the greatest artists ever.”
― Frans Johansson, Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation

“Why are we so hesitant about working in diverse teams? The reason is at least in part a function of human nature. Humans have a tendency to stick with people who are like themselves and avoid those who are different. Psychologists have a name for this tendency. They call it the similar-attraction effect.”
― Frans Johansson, Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation

“All of this suggests that it makes sense to spend significant amounts of time reading and drawing, learning and experimenting, without guidance from instructors, peers, and experts.”
― Frans Johansson, Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation

“Cultural diversity does not only imply geographically separated cultures. It can also include ethnic, class, professional, or organizational cultures. The mere fact that an individual is different from most people around him promotes more open and divergent, perhaps even rebellious, thinking in that person.”
― Frans Johansson, Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation

“Innovations must not only be valuable, they must also be put to use by others in society.”
― Frans Johansson, Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation

“we must employ tactics that allow us to learn as many things as possible without getting stuck in a particular way of thinking about those things.”
― Frans Johansson, Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation

“Gould was clearly the expert taxonomist, but it was Darwin who proposed the radical notion: Was it possible for a species of birds to split into two (or more) species if the birds were isolated on separate islands? This notion eventually became the basis for what may be considered the most significant scientific revolution of our time, the theory of evolution.”
― Frans Johansson, Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation

“A person with low associative barriers, on the other hand, may think to connect ideas or concepts that have very little basis in past experience, or that cannot easily be traced logically. Therefore, such ideas are often met with resistance and sentiments such as, “If this is such a good idea, someone else would have thought of it.” But that is precisely what someone else would not have done, because the connection between the two concepts is not obvious.”
― Frans Johansson, Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation

“Intersectional innovations, on the other hand, change the world in leaps along new directions.”
― Frans Johansson, Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation

“Interestingly, to be considered creative, it is not enough that an idea is new. To say that 4 + 4 = 35,372 is definitely original, but it hardly qualifies as creative.”
― Frans Johansson, Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation

“Together they forged a new world based on new ideas—what became known as the Renaissance. As a result, the city became the epicenter of a creative explosion, one of the most innovative eras in history. The effects of the Medici family can be felt even to this day.”
― Frans Johansson, Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation

“For instance, when childproof lids on medicine bottles were introduced, it led to a significant increase in the number of child poisonings because parents became less careful about keeping the bottles away from their children.”
― Frans Johansson, Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation

“The risk people tend to fear most is not financial loss or wasted time. Rather, it is the risk to their pride, status, and prestige, to what their peers will think of them if they fail.2 In other words, the risk of failure can weigh more heavily than what is at risk.”
― Frans Johansson, Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation

“It essentially meant that anyone was allowed to use Linux as long as they did not sell it, and”
― Frans Johansson, Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation

“Value networks are needed to succeed within a field. That’s why we form them. And that is, as you may have guessed, where all the trouble starts.”
― Frans Johansson, Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation

“They urge you to stay within your own field—away from the Intersection. It is not that the network is holding you back on purpose. There is no conspiracy.”
― Frans Johansson, Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation

“Incentives were important in attracting a candidate to accept a particular job, but once on the job it hardly mattered at all. People who are driven to perform do so based on internal drive, not on external incentives. They want to do a good job.”
― Frans Johansson, Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation

“If intrinsic motivation is high, if we are passionate about what we are doing, creativity will flow. External expectations and rewards can kill intrinsic motivation and thus kill creativity. When intrinsic motivation drops off, so does our willingness to explore new avenues and different ideas, something that is crucial at the Intersection. This means that in order to stay motivated and execute an intersectional idea, as did Prothrow-Stith and Hawkins and Dubinsky, we must be careful of explicit, external rewards. Stephen King puts it this way: “Money is great stuff to have, but when it comes to the act of creation, the best thing is not to think of money too much. It constipates the whole process.”14”
― Frans Johansson, Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation

“In a famous 1987 study, researchers Michael Diehl and Wolfgang Stroebe from Tubingen University in Germany concluded that brainstorming groups have never outperformed virtual groups.7 Of”
― Frans Johansson, Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation

“Too much expertise, as we have seen, can fortify the associative barriers between fields. At the same time, expertise is clearly needed in order to develop new ideas to begin with.”
― Frans Johansson, Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation

“Cultural diversity does not only imply geographically separated cultures. It can also include ethnic, class, professional, or organizational cultures. The mere fact that an individual is different from most people around him promotes more open and divergent, perhaps even rebellious, thinking in that person. Such a person is more prone to question traditions, rules, and boundaries—and to search for answers where others may not think to.”
― Frans Johansson, Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation