Frans Johansson

Frans Johansson is the bestselling author of The Medici Effect and founder of The Medici Group, whose career has been defined by a singular insight: breakthrough innovation happens when ideas from different disciplines, industries, and cultures collide. He speaks on innovation, diversity and inclusion, business transformation, and the leadership skills required to navigate accelerating change, helping organizations unlock growth by thinking at the intersection. His book has been translated into more than 20 languages and became the definitive text on how diversity drives innovation.

Author, Entrepreneur, Intersectional Thinker
Johansson holds a Bachelor of Science from Brown University and an MBA from Harvard Business School, and has founded a software company, an international healthcare firm, and a hedge fund. His second book The Click Moment was named one of Fast Company’s top ten best business books of the year and argues that serendipity and unexpected action are key drivers of success in unpredictable markets. He is now CEO of Medici Next, which translates his innovation frameworks into AI-enabled programs for enterprise clients.

Global Speaker & Diversity Advocate
Johansson has spoken for Volvo, Unilever, Kraft, PepsiCo, IBM, JP Morgan, Nike, the World Bank, and the World Diversity Leadership Summit, among hundreds of others. He has appeared on CNN’s AC360, ABC’s Early Morning Show, and CNBC’s The Business of Innovation. Raised in Sweden by an African-American and Cherokee mother and Swedish father, Johansson has lived at the intersection his entire life. He speaks on innovation strategy, DEI as competitive advantage, cross-disciplinary thinking, and organizational agility.

What does Frans Johansson speak about?

Frans Johansson speaks on innovation, diversity, and where breakthrough ideas actually come from, arguing that the intersection of different fields and perspectives — not specialization — is the real engine of disruption. His keynotes give organizations a framework for engineering more of these intersections.

What is Frans Johansson’s background?

Johansson is the author of The Medici Effect and The Click Moment, both widely cited frameworks for innovation strategy. He has advised Fortune 500 companies and global organizations on building cultures that generate breakthrough ideas.

Who books Frans Johansson to speak?

Meeting planners book Frans Johansson for innovation summits, leadership conferences, and corporate audiences seeking a research-backed approach to building more diverse, idea-generating teams.

The Click Moment: Seizing Opportunity in an Unpredictable World

Success, we’re told, is the outcome of careful planning, analysis, and strategy. But the truth is, success is far more random than we’d like to believe. In fact, in today’s complex, volatile, and random world, the five-year business plan is obsolete and going through the motions can no longer guarantee strong performance. If planning is out the window, what do you have? According to Frans Johansson, look for “click moments”—rare opportunities, often serendipitous, to change course. He will discuss how to spot click moments and increase their occurrence in our lives, how to place lots of high-potential bets, and how to harness the complex forces that lead to a winning strategy.

The Medici Effect: Groundbreaking Innovation at the Intersection of Disciplines & Cultures

What do goat milk, spiders, and fishing lines have in common? Fiber optics and concrete? Ant hills and architecture? 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. Through the Medici principles of innovation, see how companies become global leaders, how products and services yield huge margins, and how the most unlikely people have outdone the experts in their own fields.

Diversity Drives Innovation

The world is changing fast. People today are more global than ever and move often between many cultures and countries. Companies, cities, and nations must compete on a global basis. In this new order of rising economies and beleaguered first-world nations, diversity is more important than ever for innovation. Frans 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 and R&D centers—and very profitable ones. In this program, Frans Johansson clearly and persuasively shows what happens when companies make diversity their most powerful innovation tool.

Intersectional Thinking & the New Innovative Leader

The only constant is change and our interconnectedness means the world has become far more unpredictable. How do leaders navigate in this climate? Frans Johansson believes it takes a new kind of thinking, passion, courage, and collaboration to thrive and compete successfully in today’s business world. He coined “Intersectional Thinking,” which calls for leaders to create, actively seek, and see intersections around them. Leaders who become Intersectional Thinkers can spark organization-wide culture change using their existing resources, perspectives, experiences, and backgrounds. In this talk, the audience will gain a fresh look at innovation and what it means to be an adaptive leader. More importantly, they will discover how they can develop their own creative abilities to inspire change and innovative growth.