In 2004, the American management guru and entrepreneur Frans Johansson published his book ‘The Medici Effect’.
Johansson’s book owes its name to the rich bankers family De Medici, which had a lot of influence in Italy in the 15th century. This family unleashed an explosion of creativity during this period and encouraged painters, sculptors, poets, scientists, philosophers and architects to come up with inspiring ideas.
By supporting them financially, they were given freedom, which ultimately laid the foundation for the Renaissance. It was precisely the combination of different disciplines that brought a lot of innovation to art, which in turn led to innovation and renewal in that time period.
AQUAVIT
One of the lengthier examples cited in the book is that of Marcus Samuelsson, chef at Aquavit, a Swedish restaurant in New York, who is one of the pioneers of what we now know as fusion cooking.
In the mid-90s, the 24 year old chef introduced a series of dishes -oysters with mango curry sorbet, caramelised lobster with seaweed pasta – that resulted in the New York Times’ food critic raising Aquavit’s rating from a respectable one star to a rare three star, turning it into one of the city’s most popular restaurants.
Samuelsson is now one of America’s most famous chefs and according to Johansson, his talents stem from low associative barriers – a child-like ability to draw associations that adults tend to lose.
Samuelsson’s familiarity with world cuisine comes in part from his early experience on a cruise liner and he connects this with his base knowledge of Swedish ingredients and cooking techniques to great effect. “He’s placed himself at the intersection of cultures, where creativity is at its best,” says Johnansson.
The other postulate of the Medici Effect is more ideas lead to better ideas – and that, diverse teams generate more ideas.
One company that leverages the Medici Effect is Hewlett Packard, whose Lab in the US has 32 scientists from 13 countries and 13 disciplines.
Johansson says the company has a rule that new hires should never have the same background as any existing member of the team.
“They recognise that diversity drives innovation,” he says. “That’s because different cultures think of the same things differently.”
COMPARING APPLES AND ORANGES
Our resistance to comparing seemingly dissimilar or unrelated things stifles the cross-pollination of ideas from different disciplines.
Life, it turns out, doesn’t happen in compartmentalized silos. There’s little to be learned from comparing similar things.
To facilitate cross-pollination, your team should comprise of people with diverse interests.
The fit often won’t be perfect, but the act of comparing different perspectives will spark new lines of thinking.
To compare different ideas, you have to collect them first.
The more diverse your collection, the more interesting your output.
