Real innovation success only comes from people who have deeply internalized and live the fundamental principles of renewal and innovation – that is my conviction.
At the verrocchio Institute, we teach these valuable principles to our participants and protégés. This book plays an essential role in this. Da Vinci already lived these principles and Stefan Klein has succeeded in expressing this clearly and easily readable in his book.
With this book, you understand how Leonardo and all other visionaries and innovators see and think about the world. Absolutely every example and angle of Leonardo da Vinci can be found in our current world – one example: Klein writes “Unlike the scholars of his time, Leonardo made a living by promising spectacular art and technology to his clients.” We need only think here, for example, of Elon Musk, who promised his investors backward-landing rockets.
In his approach to creating his works, we find the principles and courses of action that we know from methods such as Design Thinking and Lean Startup.
Quote: “Today we are guided by our knowledge; Leonardo, even in his old age, was ready to see things with the eyes of a child. We divide our knowledge by disciplines and demand logic in them; he considered the whole world as a unity and looked for similarities between the most distant phenomena. We try to solve problems as systematically as possible; he did it by combining in an original way. We want answers; he asked questions. But nothing prevents us from learning from Leonardo’s approach – not as a substitute for the modern way of thinking, but to complement it. Above all, Leonardo exemplified how far a person can come who researches without a goal. Driven by curiosity, he worked solely out of the desire to understand the world. But it was precisely in this purposelessness that he advanced to so many horizons as never before and never again by a single man. Because he did not want to get anywhere, he was always free to choose not the fastest but the most interesting path. This is his real legacy: Leonardo da Vinci showed what man is capable of when he frees himself from the constraints and apparent certainties of his world.”
Enjoy reading!