BiF-4 Insights – Frans Johansson – Author – “Medici Effect”

Spoke briefly about the The Medici Summit.

People at the Harvard Centennial on Monday/Tuesday changed their speeches based on the financial cris, but not here at BiF:

• We view risks differently
• Innovators and Entrepreneurs

People adjust behavior to the perceived risk around them:

• Example of German taxi drivers and the introduction of anti-lock brakes
• No reduction in accidents despite this safety feature
• People drive faster, follow closer in response to this safety feature’s introduction

Apple’s $500 million investment in the Newton versus Palm’s spending $7 million on the Palm Pilot:

• Why did Palm spend so little?
• Because that is all they had left to spend

We think we can increase success by having (or spending) more money, but we can’t

• When we have more money, we spend it on trying to reduce the risk
• Strategy/Planning
• Researching if anyone else is doing it
• If they are, maybe we give up (falsely)
• What about Google? They weren’t the first to do search, other people were doing similar things.

Example of three Harvard Business School graduates not ending up where they planned:

• One went from a startup to another startup to another startup (none of which succeeded)
• One went from a startup to a Strategy Consulting Firm
• One went from a Strategy Consulting Firm to Google to being retired

We can take more chances:

• Perseverence
• War option
• Passion helps us take chances

For more information on the talk, go here.