What do termites and architecture have in common?
Music records and airlines?
And what does any of this have to do with
health-care, card-games or cooking ?

Most of us would assume nothing. But out of each of these seemingly random combinations have come groundbreaking ideas that have created whole new fields. In his bestselling book, Frans Johansson takes us on a fascinating journey to the Intersection: a place where ideas from different industries and cultures meet and collide, ultimately igniting an explosion of extraordinary new innovations.

Johansson calls this proliferation of new ideas “the Medici effect”—referring to the remarkable burst of creativity enabled by the Medici banking family in Renaissance Italy. In this fascinating book, he reveals how we can find intersections in our own lives and turn the ideas we find there into pathbreaking innovations. Johansson explains that three driving forces—the movement of people, the convergence of scientific disciplines, and the leap in computational power—are increasing the number and types of intersections we can access.

The Medici Effect is filled with vivid stories of intersections across domains as wide-ranging as business, science, art, and politics. You will learn from CEOs, derivative traders, scientists, fashion designers, authors, public health advocates, venture capitalists, game designers, and entrepreneurs. From the experiences of the man who single-handedly created and taught the first Cherokee written language to the team that cracked the German “Enigma” code during World War II, readers will learn how to find the Intersection and unleash the Medici Effect.

It is the first book to fully explore the concept of cross-field and cross-cultural combinations and to offer clear guidance on how to make such an approach work effectively. It brings its readers along for a fast-paced, fact-filled journey about innovation and creativity. By the time you are done you will see intersections all around you — and understand how to take advantage of them.

What can you learn from rock music, insect behavior, foreign business practices, and meteorite patterns? You’ll never know unless you step into the Intersection and find out. Once you’re there, you just might discover an idea that changes the world...