What is The Urbanite Project?
By Frans Johansson
The author of The Medici Effect explains how the explosion of new ideas at the intersection of different fields can change Baltimore-starting with you:
Let me ask you a question. What is the connection between termites and architecture? Shoe designers and car engineers? Lollipops and sea urchins? Or butterflies and mobile phones?
The connections may not be too obvious at first, but each of those combinations represents a remarkable innovation, and an incredible idea. Those who find such unique connections (almost all of us) and dare to pursue them (a lot fewer of us than should be) are the ones who are breaking new ground. Those people who can step into an intersection of different fields or cultures are those who will change the world.
It may seem quite counterintuitive at first-but the fact is that you have the best chance of breaking new ground if you combine what you know today with ideas or concepts from other fields or cultures. Your best shot at innovation does not, in fact, come from you increasingly specializing in your current field. It may help you change things incrementally, in small, predictable steps. But it shuts you out of more intriguing and groundbreaking discoveries.
Take this guy, Mick Pearce, for instance. He is an architect that received a tough challenge to design an attractive building in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, but also, in the design, to get rid of any need for air conditioning.
This may, on the face of it, seem ridiculous. After all, it can get pretty hot in Harare. But Pearce solved the problem by basing his architectural designs on how termites cool their tower-like mounds of mud and dirt.
How was that again?
It turns out termites must keep the internal temperature in their mounds at a constant 87 degrees in order to grow an essential fungus. Not an easy job since temperatures on the African plains can range from above 100 degrees during the day to below 40 at night. Still, the insects manage it by ingeniously directing breezes at the base of the mound into chambers with cool, wet mud, and then redirecting this cooled air to the peak. By constantly building new vents and closing old ones, they can regulate the temperature very precisely.
Pearce's passion for understanding natural ecosystems allowed him to combine the fields of architecture and termite ecology and to bring this combination of concepts to fruition. The office complex, called Eastgate, opened in 1996 and is the largest commercial/retail complex in Zimbabwe. It maintains a steady temperature of 73 to 77 degrees and uses less than ten percent of the energy consumed by other buildings its size. And it saved $3.5 million immediately because they did not have to install an air-conditioning plant.
Pearce had become an innovator-he had changed the world, or at least a small part of it. What, exactly, enabled him to become such a leader? He was not a world-leading expert in architecture and he certainly was not an expert in termite ecology. But he did not have to be. Instead, Pearce used his knowledge within one field and joined it with ideas and concepts from another seemingly unrelated field. He, in other words, stepped into the intersection between those two fields-and struck gold because of it.
Pearce broke new ground, not because he focused relentlessly on one field within one culture. Instead, it was his willingness to explore ideas and concepts outside of his field of expertise that enabled him to break new ground. We can all do this. In fact, in the fast-changing world that has emerged during the last couple of decades, finding such intersections is a requirement. It is the surest way to generate groundbreaking ideas and make them happen.
I call the explosion of new ideas at the intersection of different fields "the Medici Effect," a name derived from a remarkable burst of creativity in fifteenth-century Italy. The Medicis were a banking family in Florence that funded creators from a wide range of disciplines. Thanks to this family and a few others like it, sculptors, scientists, poets, philosophers, financiers, painters, and architects converged upon the city of Florence. There they found each other, learned from one another, and broke down barriers between disciplines. Together they forged a new world based on new ideas-what became known as the Renaissance. As a result, the city became the epicenter of a creative explosion, one of the most innovative eras in history. Leonardo da Vinci is the illustrious standard-bearer of the Renaissance and is the ultimate representation of Europe's most creative explosions of art, culture, and science. The effects of the Medici family can be felt to this day.
We, too, can create the Medici Effect. We can ignite this explosion of extraordinary ideas and take advantage of it as individuals, as teams, and as organizations. We can do it by bringing together different disciplines and cultures and searching for the places where they connect. And there has never been a better time to do this than now.
In my travels around the world, while speaking at corporations and conferences and while talking to innovators of all kinds-entrepreneurs, scientists, designers, executives, artists, policy-makers-it has become very clear that the need for innovation is at a fever pitch. The world is changing at a breathtaking speed-faster than ever before. I have yet to meet an executive who with confidence can tell me where his or her industry will be five years from now. Imagine being an executive in the CD industry in the mid-nineties. You could have the best, most strategic plan to conquer this industry, to become a global market leader. But today you would be dead. You'd be gone. The world is changing fast and we have to change with it. But how?
Today the world is converging in more places than ever before. People move between different countries and our communities get increasingly diverse; science and technology are converging faster than ever before, and the power of the Web connects people between places in ways that only a couple of years ago would have been unthinkable. This convergence is giving rise to more intersections than ever-and more opportunities for each one of us to create the Medici Effect. Everywhere you can see such connections: Nike designers work with General Motors engineers to develop tire patterns that resemble a sneaker's sole (for the H3 Hummer). Marcus Samuelsson, a black chef born in Ethiopia, learns how to cook food around the world and innovates Swedish cuisine at his restaurant Aquavit. He becomes the youngest chef to ever to receive a three-star rating from The New York Times, for dishes such as sea urchin lollipops. Dr. Deborah Prothrow-Stith steps into the intersection of violence prevention and health care and dramatically drops the level of violence and murder in Boston during the 1990s. Groundbreaking ideas spring out of such unusual connections. This is how we innovate; this is how we change our world.
In this issue of Urbanite you will see a few such remarkable collaborations. But any one of you can reach to a field or culture different than your own. If you can find a connection, you may have discovered the best chance to create something new, to change our world.
As it turns out, the single best way of breaking out of the pack is to take what you know right now, today, and combine this knowledge with ideas from other fields, industries, and cultures. When you find those connection points, explore them and prepare for an explosion of groundbreaking ideas.
So what about the intersection between butterflies and mobile phones? I'll let you work that one out for yourself . They are connected, however-and the truth is that most things in this world are connected. The world is, indeed, a connected place. But it wasn't created that way. There has always been someone making the connections.
It could be you.
2008. This year, the project consists of seven teams of collaborators; each team has been asked, What would you do if there were no boundaries? What concern–either here in Baltimore or globally– would you confront if nothing stood in your way? The Urbanite Project aims to explore the possibilities of collaborative innovation and bring that power to bear on the most intractable human problems.
here are the two teams with ideas that stuck out to me, with some excerpts from their articles:
team one: the neighborhood exchange program
"the idiosyncrasies and individual character of these neighborhoods contribute to baltimore's rich texture and coarse charm, but they also reinforce baltimore's stratification and contribute to its entrenched problems. neighborhoods are pitted against one another for shares of city resources, close neighbors willfully ignore problems in adjacent communities, and residents are discouraged-through ingrained habits, prejudices, or political pressure-from straying beyond their neighborhood boundaries."
"each group repeated the theme that a lack of knowledge and communication between adjacent communities cause frustration, confusion, and slow progress on a number of shared issues. during our discussion, several participants expressed beliefs that the department of recreation and parks moves resources from one neighborhood to another without explanation or prior discussion, that the school system makes decisions based more on political maneuvering than neighborhood needs, and that the baltimore development corporation flies under the radar to evade community involvement in major development projects. the lack of communication and human connections between neighborhoods prevents residents from fully comprehending or influencing city government decisions such as these."
"we hope that other neighborhoods will see this as an impetus for their own neighborhood exchange programs, reaching across the walls to meet with the unknown other that we are taught to avoid, combat, or ignore. this idea should not be limited to community groups–any individual can take steps to expand his or her horizons. the goal is to reach out and meet our neighbors, looking outward as well as inward. we believe that a collection of neighbors and neighborhoods can rally around their commonalities and respond to their collective differences, proving literally greater than the sum of their parts."
"historically, neighborhood identities run deep in baltimore, and while that adds to the city's charm, it can work against building the kinds of connections the city needs to reach its full potential." this team used photography to "examine the disconnect and interconnectedness of baltimore's neighborhoods and people."
"we live and work in this giant checkerboard with its more than 250 neighborhoods, each of us only one or two spaces from some community in the grips of the tragic urban trio of crime, poverty, and racial prejudice. yet a multitude of community organizations and outward-looking people persevere. they work to repair communities like weavers mending the urban fabric. they remind us about those being displaced, unable to keep up or ride the wave of progress. they also realize the value of connections, looking outside their neighborhood boundaries to join others and make their case or better their situation. let's hope enough of us are listening."
