I’m often asked what my job title is, and my standard reply is that I don’t have one.  If pushed however I use the term ‘serendipity architect.’  Mentioning this phrase is usually a good indicator of  the mindset of the person I’m talking to – if they’re open and want to know what the title means, I’m more likely to enjoy working with them.

Some people are dismissive of the term. In my experience those people are likely to be highly operational, and not the type of people that cope well with the inherent ambiguity of long term thinking and the connections to strategy and innovation.

The power of serendipity is acknowledged occasionally in the mainstream business media, like this recent example in McKinsey online:

Serendipity involves stumbling over something unusual, and then having the foresight or perspective to capitalize on it. What makes that such an attractive story? It’s the juxtaposition of seemingly independent things. In a serendipitous flash, one recent winner, an engineering firm, realized that the gear it designed for scallop trawlers could also be used to recover hard-to-get-at material in nuclear-waste pools. Surprising connections such as these set off a chain of events that culminate in a commercial opportunity. So to build this story line, think about the quirky combination of ideas that got you started and remember that serendipity is not the same as chance—you were wise enough, when something surprising happened, to see its potential.

By the way, the entire article is a good read…

I  encourage to people to mix in areas that are outside their knowledge domain, and to keep an open mind when they do so.  The reason for this is because insights often happen not when you’re looking harder at a challenge, but when you take a step back and look around to see how others have approached analogous challenges.  The January 2014 issue of Wired has an article about a doctor seeking different ways of treating cancer, and it makes for an interesting read on it’s own.  However the part that got my attention was the following when he explained where he found new directions for his thinking:

The second moment occurred five years later, at the Aspen Ideas Festival. There Agus met the famed physicist Murray Gell-Mann, who had won the Nobel Prize in 1969 for his work on the theory of elemental particles. Talking to Gell-Mann crystallized the ideas that Leaf’s article had set in motion. “My ‘Aha!’ moment came when he talked about the complex systems he confronted in physics and how he would go about trying to build models,” Agus wrote in The End of Illness. Physicists were able to build theoretical models of things they still didn’t completely understand and make discoveries using those models. Why hadn’t doctors approached medicine like this? he wondered.

It’s a great example of looking outside to go deeper inside.

Ian Leslie has penned a lovely piece for Intelligent Life about serendipity, and why it matters in the digital age.  As a serendipity architect it’s tempting to repost the entire piece, but I’ve pulled the highlights out below:

Google can answer almost anything you ask it, but it can’t tell you what you ought to be asking. Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Centre for Civic Media at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a long-time evangelist for the internet, points out that it doesn’t match the ability of the printed media to bring you information you didn’t know you wanted to know. He calls the front page of a newspaper a “discovery engine”: the lead story tells you something you’re almost certain to be interested in—the imminent collapse of the global economy, or Lady Gaga’s latest choice of outfit—and elsewhere on the page you learn that revolution has broken out in a country of whose existence you were barely aware. Editors with an eye for such things, what Zuckerman calls “curators”, are being superseded by “friends”—people like you, who probably already share your interests and world view—delivered by Facebook. Twitter is better at leading us to the interests of people beyond our social circle, but our tendency to associate with others who think in similar ways—what sociologists call our “value homophily”—means most of us end up with a feed that feels like an extended dinner party.

[…]

…But when everyone can get the same information in more or less the same way, it becomes harder to be original; innovation thrives on the serendipitous collision of ideas. Zuckerman told me about a speech on serendipity he recently gave to an audience of investment managers. As he started on his theme he feared he might lose their attention, but he was pleasantly surprised to find that they hung on every word. It soon became clear why. “In finance, everyone reads Bloomberg, so everyone sees the same information.” Zuckerman said. “What they’re looking for are strategies for finding inspiration from outside the information orbit.”

(via IN SEARCH OF SERENDIPITY | More Intelligent Life.)

So what should you learn from this?  Here’s my top three ways to create serendipity:

1. Browse the magazine rack at airports or train stations before you’re taking a journey.  Pull out a couple of magazines that you’d never normally read and browse them cover to cover.  Seek out articles/photos or advertisements that could have some relevance to your interests or work.  You’d be surprised what can come out of this simple exercise.
2. Change the route you take to work each day.  Look for items of interest along the way  – I find that seeking novelty often sparks new ways of thinking.
3. Mingle at parties. Network at functions.  Start conversations with anyone and everyone.  My preferred technique for doing this starts with looking for the odd person out.  If you’re at an unconference and everyone is wearing jeans and t-shirts, start talking to the guy who came dressed in a suit (this is based on an actual situation where I got totally drawn in to a conversation about religion 2.0).  If everyone is dressed in a suit, talk to the guy in the jeans.

What’s your best tip for creating serendipity?

When someone challenges existing paradigms, it’s all to easy to scoff. My favourite paradigm smasher was Columbus.  Prior to his epic adventure, everyone knew the world was flat – what else could it be?  Now the world is round – what else could it be?

A more recent example of paradigm smashing was profiled in this wonderful article in Wired.  It’s the story of the invention of a craft that was presumed to be impossible:

Since Cavallaro first proposed Blackbird’s design on the Internet, his concept has been ridiculed and lampooned in blogs and forums, and the idea has even been refuted in a national magazine. The debate recently reached a fever pitch among a certain type of geek, especially in Silicon Valley, so much so that some notable entrepreneurs, including Google’s Larry Page, forked over the cash to let Cavallaro finally build the vehicle. After four years of online arguments, explanations, and insults, Cavallaro has brought his vision here—to the Dirt Cup—to prove he can beat the wind.

via One Man’s Quest to Outrace Wind | Magazine.