re-Reading: The Medici Effect: Breakthrough Insights at the Intersection of Ideas, Concepts & Cultures by Frans Johansson

This is a remarkable book that should be on every bookshelf. It contains numerous practical insights and strategies that you can benefit from, no matter what profession or industry one is in.

The name of the book refers to the explosion of knowledge, culture and ideas that flourished during the Renaissance, fueled by the wealthy Medici family in Italy. It’s an appropriate metaphor for the explosion of disruptive business opportunities that we're faced with today.

The Medici Effect is divided into three sections:

Part 1 - The Intersection: The Intesection is -- a place where ideas from different field and cultures meet, leading to an explosion of ideas and possibilities. It also explains the forces that are creating it and why it's growing in importance. It also draws some important distinctions between incremental and disruptive, intersectional ones: "The key difference between a field and an intersection of fields lies in how concepts within them are combined," he explains. "If you operate within a field, you primarily are able to combine concepts within that particular field, generating ideas that evolve along a particular direction -- what I call directional ideas. When you step into the Intersection, you can combine concepts between multiple fields, generating ideas that leap in new directions -- what I call intersectional ideas."

Why are intersectional ideas important? Because they have the potential to create new markets -- what Clayton Christensen calls disruptive innovations -- and enable the people and companies who created them to become the leaders in the fields they created.

Interesting fact: communication technologies that enable collaboration, like the Internet, are helping to break down the walls between cultures, professions and fields of knowledge, unleashing massive opportunities for breakthrough innovation.

Part 2 - Creating The Medici Effect: It explains what associative barriers are, and why it's important that they be low when you're seeking intersectional ideas. It outlines some practical strategies you can use to lower your associative barriers, and how to find powerful combinations of different fields, cultures and areas of knowledge. It also does a fascinating job of explaining why explorations at the Intersection tend to yield an exponential increase in ideas and concepts. In short, it builds a convincing case for why the Intersection is the most fertile field for innovation.

Part 3 - Making Intersectional Ideas Happen: Books about innovation and creativity tend to avoid the subject of failure, but the author dives right in, with page after page of instructive advice. For example, he outlines how to regard failures of intersectional ideas, which tend to be more frequent than those from directional ones. "Successful execution of intersectional ideas... does not come from planning for success, but planning for failure. Since we cannot rely on past experience to devise a perfect execution path, we must rely on learning what works and what doesn't. Failures and mistakes during such a process are inevitable."

The book also offers some practical advice for "succeeding in the face of failure." For example, when developing a business plan for an intersectional idea, the author recommends budgeting some funds for trial and error, and learning from past failures. Perhaps most important of all, Johansson explains the critical role that courage plays in entrepreneurial ventures. Your existing network of contacts may discourage you from pursuing your intersectional idea. In fact, he says that you will probably have to break away from your network to pursue intersectional innovation.

Final Words: In a world filled with me-too, prescriptive tomes on innovation, The Medici Effect stands apart as a book that covers fresh ground, and does so in a very engaging way. The book contains a fascinating, diverse collection of real-world examples of how to find Intersectional ideas and profit from them. I give Frans Johansson a lot of credit for going beyond the "usual suspects" -- notable innovators that everyone else has written about in their books -- to find some fresh, new voices to illustrate how to pursue intersectional innovation in the real-world.

For additional insights and examples of intersectional ideas from the author, be sure to visit his Stories From the Intersection Weblog and the book website

Palestine & Liberation

funny this one... final nail to the western hypocrisy in their own eyes and words...

from Guardian...

The day Hamas won the Palestinian democratic elections the world's leading democracies failed the test of democracy. Rather than recognise the legitimacy of Hamas as a freely elected representative of the Palestinian people, seize the opportunity created by the result to support the development of good governance in Palestine and search for a means offending collective punishment for exercising their right to choose their parliamentary representatives.

They are being punished simply for resisting oppression and striving for justice. Those who threaten to impose sanctions on the palestinians are the same powers that initiated our suffering and continue to support our oppressors almost unconditionally. Palestinians, the victims, are being penalised while our oppressors are pampered.

The US and EU could have used the success of Hamas to open a new chapter in their relations with the Palestinians, the Arabs and the Muslims and to understand better a movement that has so far been seen largely through the eyes of the Zionist occupiers of their land.

Their message to the US and EU governments is this: your attempt to force us to give up our principles or our struggle is in vain. Our people who gave thousands of martyrs, the millions of refugees who have waited for nearly 60 years to return home and our 9,000 political and war prisoners in Israeli jails have not made those sacrifices in order to settle for close to nothing.

Hamas has been elected mainly because of its immovable faith in the inevitability of victory; and Hamas is immune to bribery, intimidation and blackmail. While we are keen on having friendly relations with all nations we shall not seek friendships at the expense of our legitimate rights. We have seen how other nations, including the peoples of Vietnam and South Africa, persisted in their struggle until their quest for freedom and justice was accomplished. We are no different, our cause is no less worthy, our determination is no less profound and our patience is no less abundant.

Our message to the Muslim and Arab nations is this: you have the bloodshed, the US and EU threatened the Palestinian people with collective punishment for exercising their right to choose their parliamentary representatives.

more in here

Read on Similarities between Israel & apartheid

Sony Scraps Robot Pet Aibo

The world's first mass-marketed robot, Sony's Aibo, recognizes its owners' faces and is programmed for sympathy, like a canine companion. Its eyes light up in red to show anger, green to convey happiness. It even learns its own name.

Aibo owners tend to be fiercely loyal, too. The robots have even been hacked by tinkerers seeking to add their own modifications. But none of that prevented Sony Corp. from announcing last week that it was scrapping the four-legged robot pet as part of the company's bid to reverse flagging fortunes and cut costs.

Like so many things Sony has made over the years, the Aibo is a niche product. And since Sony is pulling the plug on robot production as part of a major restructuring, so goes the Aibo.
That isn't just disappointing Aibo fans, who bought 150,000 of the toy poodle-sized machines since they were first introduced in 1999 and now worry they won't be able to get spare parts.

It may also have robbed Sony of some of mystique