What the Renaissance and WW2 can teach us
You might have watched the Award winning movie ‘The Imitation Game’ starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing. Alan Turing was the man who led the British team who during WW2 cracked the German Enigma coding machine. The Enigma was so sophisticated that the German military believed it to be completely unbreakable. But Alan Turning as his team did indeed break the Enigma, and it is generally accepted that this giant achievement alone shorten-ed the war by two years.
Now, what is interesting from an innovation point-of-view are two things:
- It took a team to crack the Enigma code – though Alan Turing was a genius he alone could never have broken the code.
- The team was a mix of really different people and skills: Alan Turing himself was a mathematician, but the team also included people with linguistic skills, knowledge of hieroglyphics and brilliance at playing chess. The only common thing across this very diverse group of people was that they all had to be able to solve The Telegraph crossword in less than six minutes to qualify for the team (others would claim that another common trait was that all code breakers were tweedy, pipe-smoking eccentrics).
The point here is that successful innovation is a team work and that the more diversity you can build into your team the more innovation you will find.
The realization that innovation is a team work – and that the more radically different the team members are – is something we first saw during the Renaissance. So let me take you back to fifteenth-century Italy and introduce to you the Medici family.
The Medici was an extremely rich banking family from Florence who was also very fond of art and science. The Medici family funded a wide range of creators and invited them to Florence to unfold their creative skills. So Florence saw in inflow of sculptures, scientists, poets, philosophers, financiers, painters and architects converge.
All these creators met, learned from each other and broke down barriers between disciplines and cultures. Together they forged a new world based on new ideas – what became known as the Renaissance. As a result Florence became an epicentre of a creative explosion, one of the most innovative eras in history.
I urge you to read the book ‘The Medici Effect’ by Frans Johansson who vividly tells the story of the Medici family and what he calls the ‘Intersection’: a place where ideas from different fields and cultures meet and collide, ultimately igniting an explosion of extraordinary new discoveries.
Applying the above learnings and insights in today’s business world I would ask you to think about the following when it comes to innovation and innovation teams in your company:
- Look for people who are smarter than yourself. Don’t see them as a threat, but as a gift.
- Look for people who do not just meet certain job criteria, but who think outside of the box, who challenge conventional wisdom and who – whilst they create flow rather than friction – are a pain in the a.. because they always ask why or why not.
- Ensure team diversity in terms of skills, background, culture, country of origin etc. A group of middle-aged Caucasian protestant white-collar males will only bring a clone to the party, not an original.
- Ask all to read the ‘Medici Effect!
May 2017 – We are currently involved in a whole range of projects from market analysis, business development to marketing and innovation planning. We have projects in the US, Asia and Europe. This is also why we dare claim that we both understand a range of different cultures and business etiquettes – and can easily navigate as well as bridge what we learn in the East in the West – and vice versa.
Jan 2017 – What a start to the new year! A new retail client in Singapore, a business college in the US and two new start-ups whom we help move up the PLC curve.
June 2016 – The ‘new’ GlobeEight will inform about a number of new exciting initiatives during the following summer weeks. After the summer holiday GlobeEight will start a range of new projects. More to follow, so stay tuned…
June 2016 – After some careful considerations the founders Asger Daugbjerg and Brian Enabled have decided to split and each pursue our own business interests. This means that Asger will continue with GlobeEight on his own.
Brian will step down from all positions and involvement in GlobeEight.
10 March 2016 – In April Asger will be lecturing on Digital Marketing at SIM University in Singapore.
7 October 2015 – Asger will be leading a seminar on Innovation management at DTU – Denmark’s technical University. How to better support, drive and manage Innovation.
22 April 2015 – GlobeEight proudly announces that we have been hired by DTU (Denmark’s Technical University) to lead an extensive innovation program in 2015-16. The iDTU program strives to build a platform for common understanding of innovation and how it can be used in research, teaching, project development and entrepreneurship.
The iDTU program will be based on three day modules for DTU staff – across the university’s many institutes and departments. It will include innovation theory, case studies and last but not least pitches where all participants will do their own innovation presentation.
GlobeEight will be mastering this program together with Hein & Partners.
19 March 2015 – After successfully having co-hosted the Crowd15 conference in end of Feb together with Danish Crowdsourcing Association and Danish Crowdfunding Association, the question now is ‘What’s next?’.
We managed to get 250 people to sign-up for the conference – because we presented more than 20 national and internation speakers all sharing latest news, newest cases, latest research and much more. Quite a 2-day event – and we got a lot of positive feed-back. Read more on Crowd15.dk
We are tempted to do arrange a Crowd16 conference. But what you think? Same concept and similar content? Or a new take? Any other thoughts? We’d like to hear from you. Send Asger an email on ad@globeeight.com. We look forward to hearing from you.
20 January 2015 – For the third time GlobeEight will participate in the annual Medico Bazar at DTU in Lyngby on March 10 – showcasing our Innometer self-assessment tool to measure your company’s innovation skills. Come visit us from 10am-4pm. Read more on http://www.sciondtu.dk/arrangementer/medico-bazar-2015/
15 January 2015 – GlobeEight is one of the founders and key partners in next month’s 2-day Crowd15 conference on crowdsourcing and -funding. Read more and Sign up for an exciting event in www.Crowd15.dk – and see you in Copenhagen on Feb 26-27.
- Read All News