The Medici Effect by Frans Johansson @ Inc 500 Awards, Washington DC

One of the most powerful presentations at the Inc 500 awards (ESET here for the 2nd time) this year was given by Swedish born Frans Johansson. Johansson' book, The Medici Effect talks about how intersections of dissimilar objects, ideas, items and cultures lead to groundbreaking innovation. Examples include the combination of the computer + candy which yielded Apple's "Yum" marketing campaign in the late 90s, which highlighted Apple's stylish new line of candy colored monitors. Another interesting example is the Birquini which is a combination of the Birqui and the bikini. Johannson suggests that the "idea stage" is just the beginning. Randomness and the reaction to new ideas is largely unpredictable, so one has remain very open to the evolutionary change of new inventions. Johansson's idea was actually demonstrated by Elon Musk, another Inc 500 speaker who was one of the founders of PayPal. Musk's original idea was to create a much broader web based, financial platform and the transaction component (which became PayPal) was only a small part of the original idea. However, as more people saw the idea, a way to facilitate online transactions, PayPal took on a life of its own. Musk is an amazing guy in his own right. His current projects include Tesla Motors, a company which is building a high performance electric car and Space X, which develops rockets and spacecraft for mission to Earth orbit and behond.