I found the Strategies 2011 keynote address on creating cultures of innovation from Frans Johansson, author of The Medici Effect: Breakthrough Insights at the Intersection of Ideas, Concepts and Cultures, incredibly insightful and very interesting. So much so, that I’ve recently shared his insights with the team here at Media 1. Several of our project managers have his book on their shelves, and I’m looking forward to reading it myself.

Johansson’s main point: diversity drives innovation and future leaders need to know how to leverage diversity to create intersections of ideas, or what he calls “The Medici Effect.”

In his keynote at Strategies 2011, Johansson clearly and persuasively showed what happens when different cultures collide. They can ignite an explosion of extraordinary new ideas and discoveries. At the intersection of widely differing perspectives, we can come up with BETTER ideas and, with diverse teams, we can come up with MORE of them.

We’re all seeking innovation and ways to foster talent who can launch the next corporate renaissance. Johansson points out that to change organizations, we need to encourage collaboration and sharing between different perspectives and cultures, and we need to allow “out of the box” thinking to move quickly from idea to implementation.