Stephen Billing’s Blog

I was at a client function the other night and one of the managers approached me saying that he was a trustee of another organisation and they’d like to talk to me about how I could help them. This kind of serendipity makes the world go round, in all aspects of life, not just business.

I serendipitously came across an article (subscription only) in the latest edition of Organization Studies by Professor Nicholas Dew of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, USA, in which discusses the role of serendipity in entrepreneurship.

What actually is serendipity? According to Dew, most of the research on serendipity involves scientific discoveries, such as the crediting of Fleming with the discovery of penicillin in 1928, even though other researchers had noted the antibacterial effects of penicillin. The story is that Fleming was actively searching for a discovery at the time, and he was cleaning his laboratory when he noticed how penicillin mold had contaminated one of his old experiments – i.e. it was a fortunate accident.  And Fleming, who had been eperimenting with antibacterial properties for years, had enough prior knowledge about molds to see an anomaly in that particular petri dish, and to immediately begin to sense its potential.

Dew points out three elements of his definition of serendipity in this story:

1. Active search for something. The goal of the search may not yet have been reached, nor may it ever be reached.
2. Fortunate accident. A fortunate accident occurs, usually related to, but not directly contributing to the original search.
3. Prior knowledge. Enough prior knowledge to recognise the additional potential in the fortunate accident.

There also has to be the flexibility to be able to take advantage of the potential of the fortunate accident. By which I mean that if you are steadfastly focused on the original search you will not see the merit in the fortunate accident.

I remember being in a project meeting where, in the course of the conversation, one of the members of the group realised that a significant piece of software development requiring a lot of time and a hefty allocation of budget would need to be done and it hadn’t been factored into the project plan – it had somehow been overlooked. The facilitator was so focused on the official agenda of that meeting that he dismissed this realisation as mere detail and ploughed on with the meeting. Luckily the issue was taken up afterwards.

It is common knowledge that discoveries like the post it note were the result of fortunate accidents such as the glue not sticking properly.

I like Dew’s identification of these three aspects of serendipity and I think that they are valuable for corporate leaders as well. As a corporate leader you are actively seeking to bring about your intentions and there are all sorts of fortunate (and unfortunate) "accidents" that occur in organisational life. The ability to spot the opportunity and the flexibility and good judgement to decide which to pursue represent the heart of good business decision making.