The Serendipity Mindset — Christian Busch

Chance favours only the prepared mind. — Louis Pasteur

4 types of chance:

Random Luck: The hand you’re dealt
Motion Luck: It depends on your basic need to release energy, not on your conscious intellect.

“keep on going and you'll stumble into something”

Blind Luck: Chance presents only a faint clue, the potential opportunity exists, but it will be overlooked except by that one person uniquely equipped to observe it, visualize it conceptually, and fully grasp its significance. Chance Ill involves a special receptivity, discernment, and intuitive grasp of significance unique to one particular recipient. Louis Pasteur characterized it for all time when he said: "Chance favors only the prepared mind."
Probe Luck: The kind of luck that develops during a probing action which has a distinctive personal flavour.

“we make our fortunes and we call them fate.”

Chance is not always a welcome guest. The snags and backlashes of bad luck are everywhere.
FLAGEL'S LAW OF THE PERVERSITY OF INANIMATE OBJECTS: Any inanimate object, regardless of composition or configuration may be expected to perform at any time in a totally unexpected manner for reasons that are entirely obscure or completely impossible.
Children raised in a barren institutional setting clearly show that normal stimuli play a positive role in human well-being. Left largely to themselves, deprived of normal maternal attention, they first cry, later become profoundly dazed and depressed. If deprived of stimuli for more than five months, they never return to normal. Adults subjected to prolonged sensory deprivation also become disturbed, confused, and lose their sense of identity."
If young rats are reared in a stimulus-rich environment, they develop more dendritic branches on their cortical nerve cells? Moreover, rats and mice not only become less competent when they are raised in a stimulus-impoverished environment, but their brains also weigh less and contain lower levels of vital chemical compounds The ideal environment then, is enriched by contrast, variety, even disschance, and it furthers the creative enterprise two ways. First, it quite literally activates the brain in general. Second, it brings in a spectrum of new facts that permits new options.
Altamirage the quality of prompting good luck inadvertently result of personally distinctive actions.
sagacity keen perception linked with the astute grasp of new relationships and the sage judgment of their significance
serendipity finding valuable things without actively seeking them as a result of accidents, general exploratory behaviour, or sagacity.

Seneca argued that luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity.
Once we realize that serendipity is not just about a coincidence that happens to us but is actually a process of spotting and connecting the dots do we start to see bridges where others see gaps.? Only then does serendipity start happening all the time in our lives.
A serendipity mindset is both a philosophy of life that many of the world's most successful and joyful people have turned to in order to create meaningful lives and a capability that each of us can develop.
The Serendipity Mindset is about recognizing that we can open our selves to the unexpected. And it is about being prepared and free from the preconceptions that can stop us being the victims or beneficiaries of luck (bad or good). We can nurture it, shape it, and make it a tool for life. In the science of serendipity, luck can be taught, coached, and created. This means that we can direct our learning, skills, education, and training programs toward influencing and mastering that process.
Every case of serendipity is unique, but research has identified three core types. All involve an initial serendipity trigger (something unexpected), but they differ depending on the initial intent and on the outcome. It comes down to two basic questions: Were you looking for something already? And Did you find what you were looking for, or did you find something entirely unexpected?
The three types of serendipity:

Archimedes Serendipity: Archimedes serendipity occurs when a known problem or challenge-a broken bathtub, or trying to get a dream job-is solved, but the solution comes from an unexpected place. You have a destination in mind, but the way you get there changes.
Post-it Note Serendipity: Post-it Note serendipity occurs when you examine a particular problem but stumble across a solution to an entirely different or even previously unrecognized problem. Your journey goes off into a completely different direction but still gets you to a destination that you like.
Thunderbolt Serendipity: Thunderbolt serendipity happens when no search or deliberate problem solving is underway. It follows something entirely unexpected, like a thunderbolt in the sky, and sparks a new opportunity or solves a previously unknown problem.

Serendipity is not just something that happens to us- it is a phenomenon with distinct features, and each of those features can be nurtured in our lives. For us to really understand serendipity and to be able to see it not as an external force but as a magical tool we can use, we need to look more closely. To do this, based on existing research we can identify three interrelated core characteristics of serendipity? 1. A person encounters something unexpected or unusual. This could be a physical phenomenon, something that comes up in conversation, or one of countless other eventualities. This is the serendipity trigger. 2. The individual links this trigger to something previously unrelated. She connects the dots, and so realizes the potential value in this apparently chance event or meeting. This linking of two previously unrelated facts or events may be called the bisociation. 3. Crucially, the value realized--the insights, the innovation, the new way of doing something, or the new solution to problem- is not at all what is expected, and not what someone was looking for, or at least not in the form it appeared. It is unanticipated.
Our natural and learned ways of thinking tend to obscure serendipity, making it harder to spot and even harder to harness. The biggest barriers to serendipity are our preconceptions of the world, the biases that often unconsciously direct our thinking and close down the possibility of serendipity. And if you don't think you have any, well that might well be your biggest preconception. Our biases can blind us to serendipitous moments when they occur, and they can even make us misinterpret serendipity that has already happened. When asked to explain their success, many people will describe their hard work and careful planning- the long-term vision and strategy that inexorably led to glory. Sometimes this is accurate, but often it is not. The key turning points in life often are moments of serendipity (or sometimes even just blind luck) that were reinterpreted after the fact, like when you present your CV to a potential employer as a very clear journey from A to B
These biases come in many forms, but there are four basic ones that are major obstacles to serendipity and that we need to overcome-~-or at lease recognize- to be able to effectively cultivate serendipity. Their names are little bit technical, but what they signify is fascinating: underestimating the unexpected; conforming to the majority; post-rationalization; and functional fixedness.

We Underestimate the Unexpected

If you think about it, you will realize that we all actually do look out for the unexpected every day, but generally only as a defence mechanism. When we use a pedestrian crossing on a busy road, we expect the cars to stop at a red light. But most of us do not take that entirely for granted, Even when the light turns red and we step out into the road, we turn half an eye to the traffic, because we also know that occasionally a driver will not stop at a red light. In a situation like this, our field of vision is broader than usual and we are looking out for the unexpected, because we know that missing it could be fatal. Imagine if we applied the same approach to the positive--keeping a broader field of vision and being alert to the unexpectedly good or useful things that might happen. British psychology professor Richard Wiseman conducted a fascinating experiment about self-perception: He found people who identify as either "extremely lucky" or "extremely unlucky," and he tested how they perceive the world.?' In one experiment, he selected two participants: Martin, who considers himself lucky, and Brenda, who considers herself unlucky (for example, she had the feeling that often bad things happen to her). The research team asked both participants to walk down a street toward a coffee shop (separately from each other), go into the coffee shop, buy a cup of coffee, and sit down. Hidden cameras in the street leading up to the coffee shop as well as in the coffee shop itself filmed them. The researchers placed a five-pound note on the pavement directly out side the entrance to the coffee shop, so that the participants would need to step over it. They also rearranged the coffee shop to only have four large tables, placing one person at each of these four tables: Three of them were actors, and one of them a successful businessman. The successful businessman was sitting close to the coffee counter. The four individuals were briefed to interact the same way with both participants. Can you guess the outcome? Martin--the lucky person- walked up the street, recognized the five-pound note, picked it up, and went inside. He ordered a coffee and sat down next to the businessman. He started a conversation and made friends with him. Unlucky Brenda, on the other hand, failed to spot the five-pound note. She, too, sat down next to the successful businessman, but remained silent until the end of the experiment. When Wiseman's team asked the two later how their day had been, they received two very different responses: Martin described how it had been a great day, that he found a five-pound note and got into a great conversation with a successful businessman (it's unclear if there was a follow-up positive outcome- but if there was, that wouldn't be unexpected at all). Brenda, unsurprisingly, said it had been a completely uneventful morning. Both participants were presented with exactly the same potential opportunities, but only one of them "saw" them. Openness to the unexpected is key to being lucky-and to experiencing serendipity. People like Martin are lucky all or most of the time for a number of reasons, but among the most important ones is their ability to recognize the unexpected. This makes the unexpected more likely to be harvested-not necessarily because it happens more often, but because we start seeing it once we start expecting to see it.

The pressure to conform to the majority view can kill serendipity, especially if it makes us ignore or look down on life's unexpected encounters, or if politics or unhealthy group dynamics take over. In fact, the insight that groups tend to make better decisions changes when individuals are not acting independently, but influence each other strongly (like in many company boardrooms)-then, decisions tend to become worse than those of independent individuals. This herd mentality can kill serendipity. So ignoring the majority carries some risk, but we should always question the majority view. Many of us self-censor, dismissing or burying thoughts or ideas, because we fear that our idea or discovery might not fit the respective context or existing beliefs.
Post-rationalization:

This matters for serendipity because our tendency to seek recognizable patterns or identities can obscure the significance of random events. It can even lead us to creating rigid formulas for success when there is no real underlying mechanism to support them. Put bluntly, if we airbrush serendipity out of our history, we make it far harder to spot when it happens again. This is particularly important given that serendipity is a process rather than a singular event, and it often has a long incubation period. We might not always be willing or able to track it back to the moment where it "started." Instead, we try to make sense out of what just happened and usually tell only half of the story. Or often even a completely different story. Creating a story can be constructive as it helps provide a focus for future progress, but if we are to learn from it, it has to be an honest one, interrogated properly, and open to reassessment.

Do You See Nails Everywhere?

Expert knowledge tends to be well-organized and highly accessible in our minds, and so having a deep knowledge of a particular domain makes it more likely that you will spot bisociations or connections that others might miss. But deep domain-specific knowledge can also lead to "functional fixedness. Functional fixedness refers to the way people who use a tool in their everyday lives, or see it used regularly in familiar ways, are often blocked mentally from seeing or using that same tool in a novel way. The old phrase "if you have a hammer then you see everything as a nail" rings true here- and the mental agility or openness to see that tool in a new way is essential if we are to build our serendipity mindset.
There are a number of systems that can help to break out of functional fixedness and the related limiting beliefs. I discuss these in later chapters. But often, it's the simple things, such as changing perspective: In Russian Formalism, a core idea was to learn to re-familiarize ourselves with everyday things that we take for granted. Tolstoy, for example, used the technique across his works- in Kholstomer, a horse is the narrator, looking at the world from the horse's point of view (Crawford, 1984; Shklovsky, 2016). Another example is TRIZ, a tool kit developed by Russian inventor Genrich Altshuller. Based on the study of countless previous inventions, ideas, and breakthroughs, the core idea is that basic types of problems and solutions are repeated across sciences and industries. Often the problem seems intractable because making a change in one aspect of a system requires a compromise in another. It does not seem to matter which lever you pull, the problem either doesn't go away, or is replaced by another problem. TRIZ provides a system for problem solvers to systematically "try out" possibilities that they might otherwise not have considered--solutions that don't just involve pulling the existing levers. In other words, it pushes users to consider the approaches and possibilities that their existing knowledge of the system might otherwise lead them to ignore or not even imagine.

a paradigm shift in the community, from focusing on what was missing (money or formal skills) to what resources were available- and making the best out of every situation.

Shifting toward this opportunity-focused mindset enables previously unseen possibilities. Taking whatever is at hand, looking at it afresh, and recombining it with other objects, skills, people, or ideas frequently leads to yet more previously unimagined ideas and insights and, as the example of Labs demonstrates, a profound change in outlook.
Once we stop obsessing about our lack of resources and look to enable individuals and give them dignity, we find that instead of beneficiaries looking for our help or employees worried about budgets, we have stimulated people who start creating their own luck. Reframing helps to create serendipity by enabling people to see potential events and situations and feel they have the capacity to act on those - to spot the triggers and connect the dots. At the core of this are changes in thought and practice. Once we stop waiting for an opportunity to loudly declare itself, we realize that opportunity is all around us if we keep our mind open and release it from closed templates and frames. When we do not take structures and constraints for granted, we look at the world with different eyes. We start to see bridges where others see gaps.

His research team presented people who consider themselves "lucky" and "unlucky" with the following scenario: Imagine you are in a bank when an armed robber enters and shoots you in the shoulder. You escape with a flesh wound. People who self-identify as "unlucky" will frame this situation as something that tends to happen in their life. This would be one more bad experience in a line of them. "Lucky" people will frame it as a situation that could have been worse, such as "the bullet could have killed me," or "I could have been shot in the head." What is happening here? Lucky people tend to frame counterfactuals along the lines of what could have been worse, while unlucky people frame them as what could have been better, or even more pronouncedly, as "the story of my life." Lucky people also tend to compare themselves with others who have had less luck (that is, with the person who was killed during the robber), while unlucky people tend to compare themselves with those who had more luck (the person who didn't get hurt at all). This becomes either a vicious or virtuous cycle: The unlucky person talks himself into misery by comparing himself with those who ended up better off, while the lucky one tends to compare herself with those who ended up worse--softening her bad luck.
Thus, the way we frame a situation- especially situations that might appear to us as if they are bad luck- is crucial. There are many ways to develop the foundations for this, both emotionally and cognitively. This can include approaches such as meditation, turning an abstract challenge or fear into concrete action steps,° or focusing on the positive elements of a situation while mitigating the risks of the bad ones. Fascinating experiments have shown that self-fulfilling prophecies particularly apply to the way we frame the world: If we think things will turn out well, they turn out well more often--and the opposite is true as well. We quite literally manifest" and "speak into existence.
It is easier to connect the dots if we have a feeling for what we are striving for. Our research at the LSE, at NYU, and at Leaders on Purpose has shown that central to many successful people and organizations is a broad ambition, a drive, a belief system, or a "guiding theory." This may be referred to as our North Star--the point, principle, or philosophy that consciously or subconsciously guides us in our respective context. Without it we may drift or sit becalmed.
The Socratic method-persistent questioning dialogue- which is one of the most effective and time-tested approaches for stimulating fresh thinking, cutting down preconceived ideas, and uncovering something from within, rather than projecting templates from the outside. The questions reduced his fellows to a state in which they realized that their preconceptions were illusions and they must start to think afresh.
My father used to say that whatever happens, with the right attitude we will always work it out.
Believing that we can learn and do anything once we put our mind to it is essential if we are going to be ready for that chance encounter, the unexpected event, the unforeseen connection- for serendipity. It is essential because without a belief that it is OK to wing it, that we can, and should, be engaged in a constant two-way interaction with the world, we might miss the opportunity to turn instances of chance into true serendipity. Giving someone the self-confidence that things will work out is probably one of the biggest gifts a parent can offer their child or that a teacher or leader can impart to their students or team.
Curiosity and, crucially, openness to unsought information and events dramatically increases our chances of experiencing serendipity.
This is often coupled with the willingness to find an anomaly or the surprise in given situation. Curious, open, and questioning minds are as the core of making discoveries and creating serendipity.
However, curiosity and openness can backfire if they distract you.
Recent research has shown that overly structured goals limit serendipity, while aspirational goals make serendipity more likely.
In one experiment participants interacted with a reading device. Some were given a specific task to find out some particular information. Others were given no task at all. The results were clear: While the first group often did find out the specific information they were seeking, the second group were much more exploratory in their interaction and tended to come away with all kinds of interesting information that was not previously sought. Other experiments have shown that groups with over-specified problems tend to be less open to unexpected moments than those with a broader purview--and that unexpected positive outcomes would happen much more often if we allowed them to, rather than forcing people or issues into particular boxes."* A focus on "food shortage" or "food scarcity" can lead development efforts to over focus on one-sided designs on food, while the focus should actually be more broadly on nutrition.
In the social sciences, the notion of "unexpected utility" captures a similar idea with regard to the people we know already. Adam Grant articulated succinctly that you cannot know when you meet someone today where that person will land tomorrow. So if you make every decision by asking "What will I get in return." you will miss out on this potentiality (and thus future serendipity)," Focus is important -but so is being able to "place bets," to allow opportunities to emerge based on new interactions, insights, and revelations.
Given that serendipity happens when we are open, the more our activities resonate with who we (think we) are or could be and what we care about, the more we can foster serendipitous moments.
Fascinating research has shown that the willingness and motivation to engage in activities that nurture serendipity can be driven by adaptable (and trainable) traits such as proactivity, humour, openness to experience, and willingness to pursue untested ideas. In particular, proactive behaviours such as taking initiative and practicing forethought can help put us into situations where serendipity can happen, and overcome barriers. They can be linked to getting better jobs and in comes, to growth and success for budding entrepreneurs, and to escaping poverty.
Creativity is particularly important in this regard, because it resembles many of the characteristics behind the emergence of serendipity: It is often dependent on our ability to attend to the unexpected, as well as to make unusual associations between ideas.
Naturally, some extrovert traits are particularly valuable for serendipity bur both introverts and extroverts can train in those. Lots of community builders around me are passionate introverts- but we have learned how to survive in a world of extroverts.

Studies have shown that extroversion can increase lucky chance encounters in three ways by meeting large numbers of people, by attracting people, and by keeping in touch with people”

Serendipity is more likely if we care about spotting potential triggers and connecting the dots--and if we have an idea of what to connect a serendipitous moment to. It is all about seeing connections where others see holes, which is easier to do if we actually care about getting somewhere. We can derive our sense of direction in many ways, be it from a deeper sense of purpose, spiritual sensing, based on principles, or by experimenting. Developing an informed gut feeling can help us navigate.
Of course, our serendipity score increases whenever there is a high concentration of interesting people.
Serendipity-inducing space design can come in many different shapes and forms. In some collaborative co-working spaces, for example, the commonly used long tables do not follow the usual design logic. Instead, the tables "bend" after two or three seats--enough to sit next to someone, but at the same time giving you the opportunity to turn away if you need privacy of space. This combines the logic of openness with the logic of focus.
Pixar, one of the most successful film studios in history (with an average gross revenue of more than $550 million per movie, including the Toy Story movies), took a similar approach. When Steve Jobs owned Pixar, he asked the architects to design its buildings "to maximize inadvertent encounters." At Pixar, artists and designers work hand in hand with computer scientists -connecting two potentially very different cultures.
Jobs scrapped it. Instead, he wanted a single big space, with an atrium at the centre. He believed that at the heart of the company should be the interaction of employees. How did he get people to actually go to the central space, especially given the two very different cultures? He shifted the mailboxes to the atrium. He moved the meeting rooms to the building's centre. He positioned the cafeteria there. And naturally, the gift shop and coffee bar went there, too. Jobs even wanted to locate the building's only set of bathrooms in the atrium. (This last idea did not go down so well, however, and he had to compromise, with several bathrooms across the campus.) These elements led to people frequenting the atrium- and bumping into each other. Guess what the crest of Pixar University says? Alienus Non Diutius- a Latin phrase meaning "Alone no longer."
Or take Wok+Wine, a social dining experience purposefully designed to create the right conditions for serendipitous encounters, which its founder Peter Mandeno launched in New York and then expanded into eleven countries. Participants stand uncomfortably close to each other, eat with their hands, and literally break bread from a communal table. Events are held in unorthodox venues such as hair salons and abandoned buildings. The space is laid out to encourage movement, increasing the likelihood of bumping into someone new. For Peter, whose PhD at Imperial College London is on how to design for human connectivity, the experimentation across contexts allowed for what he calls "optimizing serendipity.
Technology can be a powerful accelerator for serendipity.
Come up with a number of hooks that you can use in your next conversation, especially if someone asks you "What do you do?" Try to integrate three to five hooks in your (short) answer, allowing the other person to choose the one they relate to the most. Enjoy the conversation!
For serendipity to happen more often and with better outcomes, individuals and teams need to feel free and safe in their careers to pursue the unexpected and unusual- and have the legitimacy to do so. This can include setting the stage by indicating that nobody has figured it all out, and by inviting active participation with regard to what can be improved. Then, people become more alert and vigilant to unexpected encounters, and less likely to self-censor ideas.
Psychological Safety First: How safe we feel in our environment, whether that is with friends, family, or within the workplace, has a major impact on serendipity:. A safe space encourages people to speak up about the unexpected.