Chapter 5 SECOND CHANCE

As Horace Walpole defined it in 1754, Serendipity is 'the faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident.' In other words, serendipity is the result of unexpected social encounters, which lead to surprising conversations and discoveries.

While we think of serendipity as a series of 'happy accidents', if you boil it down, serendipity is the result of social interactions.

But they can't happen on their own. We as individuals need to make the social interaction happen, by putting ourselves in positions to interact, as much as possible, with people we normally wouldn't talk to. They happen when we break out of our comfort zone.

In other words, increasing social interaction leads to more serendipity. And serendipity leads to more discoveries. Discoveries become insights, and insights are the building blocks of innovation.

While serendipity may seem random, it's actually a capability, a skill we can develop. If we can increase the rate of seemingly causal random conversations and encounters - social interactions - between designers and customers, and between clients and their customers, it will lead to more frequent insights. We should be able to engineer more serendipity.

9:00

I want to ask her, hug tightly at those times, but I had better restrained myself.

After a while she gets up from her seat and starts to leave.

I restrained her for a moment.

"Why are you leaving? Where are you going?" I ask.

I held her hands but she smiled.

"Don't worry, I'll be back here, and I meet you again." She stared at me and then she left.

I was happy for a while but was replaced by a little sadness in the very short time we spent together.