What happens when talent from different disciplines come together, collide...intersect? Frans Johansson has found that it exponentially expands the numbers of new ideas that can be explored. Raised from an early age at the intersection of cultures - his mother is African American, his father Swedish, and he grew up in Sweden - he's moved from an education in environmental science to a career as a medical and software entrepreneur, and most recently an author and leading innovation speaker.

You can read The Medici Effect for the details of Johansson's very interesting work, but here are a few of his bottom line findings: 

All new ideas are combinations of existing ideas, but not all combinations are created equal. For example, scientists have taken a gene from the yellow weaver spider - web five times stronger than steel - and put it into goat herds, harvesting the milk to use as a material in strong-but-flexible artificial tendons.

People and teams that break new ground generate and execute more ideas. A hyper-explorer, Richard Branson has started 250 companies !