Everyone knows of the old saying “Great minds think alike,” usually said as a kind of joke when two people have the same idea at the same time. But just how true is that statement? In fact, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that bigger, better innovations happen when people of wildly different backgrounds and ideas come together and combine their expertise.

The Medici Effect

In 2004, Frans Johansson published his best-selling book, The Medici Effect, a ground-breaking work outlining a phenomenon of the same name that the author had come to recognize in the world of innovation. The theory draws upon the history of the wealthy and sophisticated Medici family of 14th-century Italy. Their patronage facilitated the intersection of a group of artisans from all over Europe, including painters, poets, scientists, and philosophers, who came together and ended up pooling their collective ideas in many ways. This meeting of highly creative and skilled individuals from varying backgrounds and professions largely spearheaded the Renaissance period, which was one of the most innovative and productive periods of human history across the fields of invention, art, philosophy, and science.

So, what exactly is the Medici Effect? In his research, Johansson used the term to describe the idea that the best concepts and innovations are developed at the intersection of brilliant minds from all walks of life – that new ideas are really just new combinations of old ideas. People from different regions, professions, mindsets, industries, and cultures can come together to form some of the best, most innovative ideas and solutions of this century. His theory has been proven time and time again throughout history and into the present.

Associative Fluency

This ability to see the opportunity created by connecting separate ideas together is what is calledassociative fluency. Its the skill to see what “could be” from disparate activities, technologies and ideas. In Serial entrepreneurs, their associative fluency skill is highly tuned to see what others don’t see.

Biomimicry Architecture

One of the most exciting fields where this is in evidence is that of biomimicry architecture – architecture that imitates various qualities of the natural world, bringing engineering, design, and biology together. For example, the architect Mick Pearce was commissioned to design an enormous shopping and office complex in Harare, the capitol of Zimbabwe. The catch: the developers wanted this building to use a passive climate control system, i.e., one that didn’t employ central air conditioning.

While this may sound impossible, Pearce knew that there were already such structures in existence: termite mounds. African termites must keep their mounds at a steady temperature of 87°F in order to grow the fungus that is their primary food source. When you take into consideration the drastic variation in temperature between night and day on the African savannah, it is truly remarkable that they manage to regulate the structures’ temperature so precisely. They do it by outfitting the mounds with a unique ventilation system originating around the base. By opening and closing valves connected to this system, the termites are able to control the movement of air through the structure – hot air ri...