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Notes from The Medici Effect: Breakthrough Insights at the Intersection of Ideas, Concepts, and Cultures by Frans Johansson

1. The Intersection
   1. Creative Ideas and Innovation
      1. creative ideas are new
      2. creative ideas are valuable
      3. innovative ideas are realized
   2. Intersectional ideas share the following characteristics
      1. they are surprising and fascinating
      2. they take leaps in new directions
      3. they open up entirely new fields
      4. they provide a sspace for a person, team, or company to call its own
      5. they generate followers, which means the creators can become leaders
      6. they provide a source of directional innovation for years or decades to come
      7. they can affect the world in unprecedented ways
2. The Rise of Intersections
   1. causes of the rise in interesections
      1. movement of poeple
      2. convergence of science
      3. leap of computation
3. Breaking Down the Barriers Between Fields (ie, make more and varied associations)
4. How to Make Barriers Fall
   1. expose yourself to range of cultures
   2. Learn differently (learn as many ways as possible without getting stuck in a particular way of thinking about those things)
   3. reverse assumptions
   4. try on different perspectives
5. Randomly Combine Concepts
6. How to Find the Combinations
   1. diversify occupations
   2. intereact with diverse groups of people
   3. go intersection hunting
7. Ignite the Explosion of Ideas
   1. Relationship between quanitity and quality (the most successful innovators produce and realize an incredible number of ideas)
8. How to Capture the Explosion
   1. strike a balance between depth and breadth
   2. actively generate many ideas (set a high numerical idea goal)
      1. traditional brainstorming rules:
         1. produce as many ideas as possible
         2. produce ideas as wild as possible
         3. build upon each other's ideas
         4. avoid passing judgment on ideas
      2. brainstorming downsides
         1. only one person can talk at once
         2. short term memory can't keep new ideas in storage while developing new ideas
         3. so, output suffers
      3. fixing brainstorming
         1. before meeting, schedule 15-20 minutes for members to brainstorm individually
         2. bring members together and start a group session on paper(w/o reading other's lists)
         3. combine ideas from all individuals and discuss most
      4. or implement brainwriting
         1. each person has a sheet of paper
         2. another sheet sits in the center
         3. people write ideas, put their paper in the center, and take another paper
         4. read the idea and add another one (related or not) and repeat from step 3 until time runs out
   3. allow time for evaluation
9. Execute Past Your Failures (get ready for failure)
10. How to Succeed in the Face of Failure
    1. try ideas that fail to find those that won't
       1. sutton's pointers:
          1. make people aware that failure to execute ideas is the greatest failure, and will be punished
          2. make sure everyone learns past failures; do not reward the same mistakes over and over again
          3. if people show low failure rates, be suspicious; they may be hiding mistakes or not taking risks rather than allowing others to learn from them
          4. hire people who have had inteligent failures and let others know that's one of the reasons they were hired
    2. reserve resources for trial and error
       1. be prepared to change plans, they may need to be adjusted
       2. spend carefully
       3. give yourself time for trial and error
       4. proceed with caution if achievement depends on a sussesful first try
    3. remain motivated
11. Break Out of Your Network
12. How to Leave the Network Behind
13. Take Risks and Overcome Fear
    1. If you want to create something revolutionary, head toward the Intersection." The Intersection represents the best chance to innovate because of the explosion of unique concept combinations.
14. How to Adopt a Balanced View of Risk
    1. Avoid Behavioral traps relating to risk

       1. Trap #1: If things are going well, we stay within a field.
       2. Trap #2: Time spent in a field becomes a reason to stay in the field
       3. Trap #3: We view risks at the intersection from a directional perspective

    2. Acknowledge risks and fears
15. Step into the Intersection
    1. the future is in the Intersection: find your way there
    2. expect the unexpected because intersections are everwhere
    3. there is logic to the intersection, but the logic is not obvious
    4. take the leap

• Good quote: "More important than keeping notebooks handy is actually using them. Getting used to recording ideas, thoughts and insights requires commitment. Once you develop this habit, though, you will wonder how you ever made it through the day without it." (pp. 113-114)