Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation |  | Author: Frans Johansson
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
Buy New: $7.92
as of 7/31/2010 02:32 CDT details
You Save: $8.08 (50%)
New (38) Used (24) Collectible (1) from $4.45
Seller: famoussyl2
Rating:  44 reviews
Sales Rank: 33776
Media: Paperback
Edition: First Trade Paper Edition
Pages: 207
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.6 x 0.8
ISBN: 1422102823
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.4063
EAN: 9781422102824
ASIN: 1422102823
Publication Date: October 1, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Features:
| • | ISBN13: 9781422102824 | | • | Condition: New | | • | Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed |
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
| |
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Why do so many world-changing insights come from people with little or no related experience? Charles Darwin was a geologist when he proposed the theory of evolution. And it was an astronomer who finally explained what happened to the dinosaurs. Frans Johanssons The Medici Effect shows how breakthrough ideas most often occur when we bring concepts from one field into a new, unfamiliar territory, and offers examples how we can turn the ideas we discover into path-breaking innovations.
|
| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 44
 Creativity with a new spin December 7, 2004
Dr Cathy Goodwin (Seattle, WA USA)
96 out of 98 found this review helpful
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, relatedly, 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.
Compulsory reading for educators, scientists, business executives, and everyone else with pretentions to intellectual prowess... December 18, 2006
Dr. Dag Von Lubitz (Mt. Pleasant, MI United States)
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
This is not an academic book. Nonetheless, all should read it, if for no other reason then simply in order to learn why having a broad-based knowledge and curiosity are essential attributes of a person living in the post-modern world.
The pattern of the book is not terribly innovative: good ideas followed by the expected examples of how sterling men and women implemented these concepts in practice and attained an even more sterling level of success. Altogether, very much in style of all other books aimed at predominantly business-oriented readers who, for whatever reason, need the examples set by (successful) luminaries in order to be converted to the creed. A more demanding reader may, upon seeing the same "follow the banality" pattern, reject the little volume as another horrid, trivial, and profoundly intellectually boring "thing." Do NOT do that: it would be a major mistake, and you would miss on a number of really important thoughts.
The book has a powerful message to all members of the academe, corporate executives, human resources operators and gurus. And practically, everyone else, including high school and university students. It should also be one of the most recommended self-help books for all university leaders guilty of having produced more than three generations of super-specialized graduates with very sketchy ideas about the world outside their own field of work. Reading one of the book's chapters every morning before going to work (best over morning coffee, and instead of the sports or cooking page) should be the compulsory task for all human resources executives that may clear their persistent misconception of a "well-defined" (1.e., narrowly specialized) professional path as a clear sign of intellectual prowess and the concomitant ability to create and lead.
For the first time in many, many years an author embarked upon the quest of promoting the concept of a generalist as the pillar of creativity, arguing that broad education and intellectual curiosity, combined with open mind and acceptance of diversity, not as a politically correct and entirely meaningless term, but as the essential constituent of life, are the critical prerogatives for breakthrough innovation. Johansson took upon himself the task of demonstrating the almost desperate need for the return to what universities have largely abandoned: development of minds equipped with broad multi-disciplinary knowledge, and capable of multi-spectral intellectual curiosity and insight instead of the vigorous mass production of bachelor, master, and doctor experts in extraordinarily narrow (to the point of ridicule) sub-fragments of their disciplines of choice.
Indeed, this is not an "academic" book, and maybe it is extraordinarily good that it is so: free from our often irritating academic stuffiness, the book speaks to any reader, independently of his/her level of formal education. It also quite poignantly exposes the deficiencies of today's academic training that often fails to endow graduates with the gift of non-dogmatic and broadely educated mind.
The "Medici Effect" should be read widely, and the underlying notions should be accepted and promoted with persistence. It is a book to which all should return when satisfaction with the currently accepted credo, and the often trivial progress that such dogma typically imposees, become the most attractive attributes of their professional lives.
I LOVE this book! September 1, 2004
New York Reader (New York, NY)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
Everyone should read this book. Simply outstanding and feels very fresh. Also very, very useful. Lots of new insights. It's thesis is that we have the greatest chance of coming up with new ideas when we step into an intersection of fields, compared to if we stay within a single field or culture. Talks about why and how. The chapters are short and to the point. Great! They also tie into each other so you are going to want to read the next one, and the next one...
The book is divided into three sections:
1. the first describes the intersection and the forces that are creating intersections between different fields and cultures today. Never knew that Shrek, Shakira and a commodities trader had anything in common.
2. the second shows us how we can develop intersectional ideas. The theory here is very well outlined and well founded and the stories are just amazing. It talks about food, games, VCs, MacGyver, music, the list goes on. Each new chapter gives more detail and useful advice. Lots of aha-moments. Really made me think hard about my projects at work and even my career.
3. the third looks at how we execute intersectional ideas. It shows why executing ideas within fields are different from at the intersection of fields. Love this section. It has perspectives on things like failures, risk-taking and motivation that I haven't heard before. Some of the stuff here was mind-blowing like the section about ants and truck drivers and how we tend to compensate for taking higher risks in one area by taking lower risks in another area.
I liked how the book tied all of the ideas together so neatly and I liked the style of writing. In the Conclusion it goes from a myth about glass, to Corning's optical fibers, to a researcher on a prisoner island in Ecuador, to what motivates us to come up with new ideas, to how we can find intersections. Neat! I recommend this book highly!
Gain insight into the world's most innovative people. August 24, 2004
Christopher Yeh (Palo Alto, CA)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
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.
The Medici Effect explains and inspires innovation September 20, 2004
Kristian
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
With the Medici Effect, Johansson launches a brilliant way of analyzing the concept of innovation and it is incredible how fast this book will make you think about the creative potential in any process or situation at hand.
The author has interviewed an impressive list of well-known pioneers from very different fields. It is their stories of successful innovation that form the basis of the work and they are presented along with research, models, and intelligent conclusions. Johansson convincingly argues that there is a pattern behind the discoveries and then he transforms this pattern into a method. Extremely insightful and extremely useful!
The Medici Effect is written with the authority of a guru - it is undoubtedly academic, yet very accessible and entertaining. This is one of those books you read that will make you look at things in a new way.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 44
|
|
|
