Frans Johansson's Innovation & Diversity Topics:

The Medici Effect: Ground-Breaking Innovation at the Intersection of Disciplines and Cultures

   What do goat milk, spiders, and fishing lines have in common? Music records and airlines? Ant behavior and telecommunications routing? Most of us would assume nothing. But out of each of these seemingly random combinations have come radical innovations that have created whole new fields. In this talk, Frans Johansson takes us on a fascinating journey to the Intersection: a place where ideas from different fields and cultures meet and collide, ultimately igniting an explosion of extraordinary new innovations. See how companies become global leaders, how products and services yield huge margins, how researchers, managers and artists outdo their peers.

Diversity Drives Innovation

   The world is changing fast. Today more people than ever move between cultures and countries. Companies, cities, even nations, must compete on a global basis just to stay even. In this world, diversity has become a key driver for innovation. Johansson explains how today’s most innovative companies form culturally diverse talent pools and teams as a specific strategy to innovate. These companies have become #1 brand leaders, R&D centers—and very profitable. In this program, Frans clearly and persuasively shows what happens when different cultures collide and ignite an explosion of extraordinary new ideas and discoveries.

Diversity Drives Innovation Part II: Use the Power of Diverse Teams to Build, Change and Grow Your Business

   A follow up session to the Diversity Drives Innovation, Frans Johansson will show how organizations can use diverse teams to connect diversity to your business, break down silos and brings out the best that everyone has to give to any challenge or opportunity. After this session people walk away energized and equipped with tangible tools, simple strategies and a proven process to create and manage diverse teams that are directly relevant to your company’s success. It reveals each person’s innate imagination and changes the way they use it, giving everyone more confidence, improved productivity and better collaborative skills that make a difference to the bottom line.

Innovative Leader: How to Break Out of the Pack

   Whether you’re facing a challenge, threat or opportunity, it takes new thinking, creative ideas and collaboration if you want to survive, thrive or compete in today’s business world. Learn how to be seen as an innovative leader in your company. It doesn’t take a new budget, space age thinkers or wildly creative types. You already have what you need. Gain a fresh perspective on what innovation is and isn’t, how it happens and, more importantly, discover how you can develop your own creative and innovative abilities to meet any challenge and make a difference.

About Frans Johansson:
  Frans Johansson is an author, speaker, entrepreneur and managing director of Medici Capital management. His recent bestselling book, The Medici Effect, was named one of the best innovation books of the year by several organizations and selected as one of the best business books of 2004 by Amazon.com. The book and many of Frans' speaking engagements look at how individuals, teams and organizations can create an explosion of remarkable ideas at the intersection of fields, cultures and industries.

   Frans has, in fact, lived at that intersection most of his life: He was a founder of both a software and medical device company. He has written articles on healthcare, on information-technology and on the science of sport fishing.

   A dynamic and passionate leader and thinker, Frans Johansson has spoken extensively about The Medici Effect to companies, organizations and universities across the US and the world. Organizations worldwide have engaged him to speak on issues of innovation and managing diversity before a wide range of audiences, from C-level executives to human resource practitioners to investment directors. These organizations include PepsiCo, Nike, Kodak, General Motors, IBM, Motorola, JP Morgan Chase, Pfizer, TeliaSonera, Handelsbanken, Time Warner, EDS, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, Industrikapital, Arla Foods, Diversity Best Practice, the cities of Orlando, Baltimore, Karlskrona etc. and at conferences and universities around the world.

    He was raised in Sweden by his African- American and Cherokee mother and Swedish father. Frans earned his MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS at Brown University