Post #2: The Medici Effect and the iPod innovation

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book What the Dog Saw, he writes about the story of the pitchman who can sell anything. Going through the text, we come to realize that his knack for selling comes not just from his charisma but in his innate understanding of what the people need. Eventually, he experimented with products he saw, paving the way to Ronco (the brand name of these kitchen tools). Not being a product engineer or any degree close to it, he combined different tools to create a number of kitchen tools that we may be familiar today; the Chop-O-Matic, Veg-O-Matic, Dial-O-Matic, and the Showtime Rotisserie.

All of these for the low low price of only 1,499.95 pesos!

When they were introduced in the market in the 1990s, it was selling phenomenally. Each home and housewife wants one. No, the tools aren’t new. They do the same function as a kitchen knife or an ordinary roaster. But what sets them apart is that it has style. It was innovative in a way that it presents a new way (arguably easier way perhaps, if not stylish) of moving in the kitchen; chop without touching the onions, make perfect egg slices at the slide of the hand, and make perfect-looking roasted chicken at your table top while your friends chat over tea and biscuits. It was changing the American kitchen lifestyle.

This rotisserie is truly fantastic darling.

This innovation is the same as the iPod. The similarity between Steve Jobs and the people behind Ronco is that they are able to identify the needs of the people and tap into this need. Instead of just listening to what the people want, they provide something that the people will want when they see it. They do not just sit down in their desks mulling over their expertise, but they bring their expertise out of the box and ask around other experts and bring these ideas together to improve their products or provide solutions.

Collaboration is the primary notion to create an innovative product. A physician can only do so much in providing solutions to an amputee. He needs not just his medical expertise but also the expertise of mechanical engineers, microbiologists, sports therapists, and other fields to provide a holistic solution, perhaps a long lasting solution to a problem.

The Medici Effect is a name for a phenomenon (a revolution perhaps) that is present since the dawn of academics, where civilizations are taking notice and recording knowledge. In Egypt, astronomers are also astrologists, mathematicians, geologists, and even architects. The Great Pyramids of Giza (and other monumental structures of civilizations) are made through the collaboration of multi-skilled individuals, pre-dating the structure of education for engineers or architects or other disciplines that we know today. In Greece, musicians are also philosophers, mathematicians, doctors, scientists, and politicians. They used to be called scholars; a part of their society, normal people that we can maybe compare to modern day teachers and scientists. But now, we call them geniuses.

You are Leo, yes? Today, the sun is in your favor. So stand there until you melt.

As history shows us, people become absorbed into segmenting fields of expertise. In my personal opinion, perhaps in trying to surpass these geniuses, people started digging deep into one area of study, sacrificing the broader view to a more in-depth (bordering to tunnel-perception) understanding of a field. This has a lot of repercussions because experts are becoming less creative in providing solutions to problems because of this certain inkling to discipline.

The greatest inventions in history are brought about from marrying two different fields. To illustrate this point clearly, we can look at the components of the inventions. The first long-lasting light bulb for example, was made from carbonized bamboo enclosed in a glass vacuum. It may seem a disconnect but if we translate this to a collaboration of fields, we can say that a biologist or an environmental scientist could have suggested to Thomas Edison that carbonized natural products can be a good filament that metals. Two different fields, one innovative product.

Not the kind of marrying I have in mind.

As a marketing professional, I cannot stress how important it is to collaborate, not just with marketing professionals but with people in the field. The most successful creative agencies are collaborating with people from different fields to develop innovative ad campaigns. David Ogilvy, founder of one of the leading creative agencies in the world, narrates in his book Ogilvy on Advertising, consistenly mentions his experiences; listening and working with different people of different expertise to bring about ad campaigns that are not just creative but innovative as well.

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