Insights Into Ideation: Anton Dohrn

When in 1870 Felix Anton Dohrn arrived in Naples, he was 30 years old and almost certainly only rich in culture and enthusiasm. When he died in 1909, his vision and dream of a place where researcher could have freely studied, without any academic or bureaucratic barrier, had come true.

This (short) article is nothing more than an attempt to look into the drivers that led Anton Dohrn to innovate research and scientific collaboration.

The Story

Felix Anton Dohrn was born in Stettin, Prussian Province of Pomerania on the 29th of September 1840. Trained in biology and medicine, he was a prominent Darwinist and the founder of the first research station for zoological studies.

Initially interested in Hemiptera, he became a fervent defender of the theory of evolution when introduced to it by Ernst Haeckel, in 1962.

Having worked several times at facilities located to the sea, Dohrn developed the idea to establish an international network of laboratories for the scientific community provided with the necessary space, equipment, research material and a library. He dreamt to cover the globe with such stations, allowing researchers to collect material and make experiments.

To fund his venture, Anton initially pitched the idea to his father. Who refused to give him the money.

But he didn’t give up. And it was during a visit to the newly opened Berliner Aquarium Unter den Linden that he suddenly realised how to make his vision come true. His intuition was to build an aquarium on the coast of the Mediterranean and, with the profits of this venture, cover the costs of the research station. It was the 4th of January 1870.

He immediately summoned his friends and explained them his plan: in nine months, with 120 visitors every day, he would have covered the interests, costs and made some profit. Imagining stations in Portugal, Gibraltar, Ireland and on the islands of Cabo Verde, he left for Italy.

To realise his idea, he ended up choosing one particular city: Naples. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants, one of the largest and most attractive cities of Europe, Naples had a considerable flow of tourists that could have visited the aquarium.

Demonstrating remarkable public relation skills, Dohrn, who was German, managed to defeat obstacles in front of which even the most willful Italian would have surrendered. He overcame the doubts of the authorities and persuaded them to give him, free of charge, a plot of land in the beautiful Villa Comunale. He was a traveller, a promoter and was able to excite people’s enthusiasm and energy.

He later on introduced the “Bench System”: Universities, governments, scientific institutions and individuals could send one scientist to the Stazione Zoologica for one year by paying an annual fee.

Anton Dohrn died on the 26 September, 1909. His idea and system worked extremely well and allowed more than 2,000 scientists from Europe and the US to make research. The aquarium, with an entrance cost of 5,000 Italian Liras, had given profits for 80,000 and covered two fifths of the Station’s costs.

It is also to Anton Dohrn and his Stazione Zoologica in Naples that we have to thank for how we understand international scientific collaboration in the modern sense, i.e. based on quick and free communication of ideas, methods and results. Between 1901 and 1973, 19 Noble prize winners worked at the Stazione, a fact that well illustrates the magnitude of Anton Dohrn’s legacy.

Insights Into Ideation

“Every amazing creative thing you’ve ever seen, or idea you’ve ever heard can be broken down into smaller ideas that existed before.” (Scott Berkun)

Regardless of what brought him to be enthusiastic about the idea of establishing a research centre for zoological studies, the creative process that led Anton Dohrn to understand how to turn his idea into a sustainable business model, is what I’m mostly fascinated with. In fact, it serves as a premise, like many other examples would perfectly do as well, to look into what innovative ideas are. And it doesn’t necessarily have to do with being smart.

In fact, to train ourselves as effective ideators (here understood as a defining trait of entrepreneurs), we should should focus on:

• Observation;
• Curiosity about business models (also or especially from other sectors/industries); and
• Studying or, if you prefer, acquiring knowledge, being (or at least striving to be) an expert in a given domain.

After all, every idea, every achievement and every discovery is a recombination, a reuse, a copy, etc. of other ideas or discoveries. As Isaac Newton famously put it: «If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.»