You may not have heard of Medici before, but you’ve probably heard of the renaissance. The medici family hosted the round tables, the meetups, the social gatherings & mixers. They brought diverse artisans engineers & thinkers together, and the world hasn’t been the same since!
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In the Medici Effect, Frans dissects what this famous family did. His case studies include the likes of Richard Branson, Deepak Chopra, Charles Darwin, Thomas Edison, Orit Gadiesh, Marcus Samuelsson, George Soros & our own favorite Linus Torvalds,
What he discovered really surprised me.
1. Swim at the intersection
Hanging out with folks in your field is great. Whether you’re a physician, financial analyst, Ruby programmer, or artist. But it won’t expose us to enough new ideas. To get that, you need to hang out with those in other disciplines. Learn a language, take dance classes, try your hand at a new sport, or attend meetups of wedding planners or DJs. Whatever it takes to get out of your comfort zone is what will put you at the intersection.
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2. You need quantity to get quality
This was a very surprising finding of their research. One might think that greats like Albert Einstein were geniuses from the start. But it turns out one consistent factor between all these folks is the quantity of their attempts. They came up with many many ideas, and chased as many as they could. Of course they are only remembered for their successes, but this hides the underlying mathematics. It’s a numbers game in almost all of these cases.
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3. Peel all the potatoes and cook them together
Peel one potato and cook it. Then peel another and cook it. Doesn’t sound like a recipe for efficiently preparing dinner does it? Turns out it’s also not great for innovating. Peel & prepare many ideas at once, and try to execute them in parallel if you can. That’s what these greats have done.
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4. Be ok with more failures
This is a tricky one. But Johansson puts in perspective with this key quote:
”Inaction is far worse than failure.”
Viewed that way, our caution about diving into a new idea seems more limiting. True it costs money, time & resources to pursue new ideas, ventures & startups. So be sure to reserve resources. That’s right spend that money & time carefully lest you run out before hitting on the big one.
He also says to be suspicious of low failure rates. In yourself or those you’re evaluating. This probably indicates you’re not risking enough, or trying new things constantly.
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5. break out of your network
Your network is powerful to pursue your career, or following existing well traveled paths. But they can be an obstacle when forging new paths, which is what innovation is all about.
So break away from your networks. One way you can do this is by building a new one. But be sure to surround yourself with diverse cultures, upbringing, backgrounds & expertise.
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