Contrary to popular belief, serendipity does not have to be accidental. It can be planned, prepared for, and thereby enhanced.
A long while back, CBS Sunday Morning aired a great segment on how many of today’s most interesting products came from accidents. Correspondent Martha Teichner shared the following quote from Dr. Morton Meyers, author of Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs:
“Serendipity refers to looking for one thing and stumbling over something else that proves to be of greater value… What serendipity means is misadventure, an inadvertent observation, a happenstance that a sharp, open mind can exploit to find its true benefit.”
I am not so sure that there is any misadventure about it, frankly. Most serendipity comes from well-intentioned pursuits, not misadventures. What is required is a sharp, open, prepared mind that recognizes that somewhere in the results of that pursuit, something else—something more important—lurks.
A Solution Without a Problem: The Post-it and Bottom-of-the-Funnel Serendipity#
One example included in the CBS Sunday Morning segment was the Post-it. It is one of the most profitable products ever, but it started with an accident.
In 1968, 3M scientist Dr. Spencer Silver was tasked with developing new adhesives—specifically, in his words, “bigger, stronger, tougher adhesives.” He failed miserably. What he created instead was a very weak, rather puny adhesive.
The adhesive had an interesting property, though: it retained its stickiness, which made it reusable. It could be stuck, removed, and re-stuck, all without leaving a residue behind.
Silver was convinced he’d stumbled upon something great. He spoke of it often to his colleagues. “I came to be known as Mr. Persistent because I wouldn’t give up,” he said. Despite his efforts, for many years the adhesive remained “a solution without a problem.”
Flash-forward six years. In 1974, another 3M scientist, Art Fry, had a problem. He sang in his church choir, and each week at practice he used little scraps of paper to mark the hymns for the upcoming service. When Sunday rolled around, though, his bookmarks had often fallen out, leading to confusion and frantic riffling of pages.
Then serendipity struck. Frustrated with his itinerant bookmarks, Fry recalled one of Silver’s seminars and had a eureka moment. Fry had a problem, and Silver had the solution.
This is what I call bottom-of-the-funnel serendipity. You look at what has dripped out the bottom of the funnel and see what you can do with it, making a connection between your technology and a problem that exists in the world.
The Post-it aha moment was serendipitous, but it was not happenstance. It was the product of two open minds and a whole lot of preparation. When Silver first created his “failed” adhesive, he did not dismiss it as a failure. While he did not know what problem this adhesive could solve, he believed such a problem existed. So he worked to spread knowledge of his innovation, planting the seeds for serendipity. Then Fry came along and harvested those seeds. And thus was the Post-it note born.
A Problem Without a Solution: An Optical Lock and Top-of-the-Funnel Serendipity#
Several years ago, I was working on a problem for a Fortune 100 company. They wanted one master key to open all the doors in a building during construction. Once construction was complete, though, or if the key was lost, they needed to quickly ensure it would no longer work. With potentially thousands of doors in the building, mechanically changing every lock wasn’t feasible, so traditional lock systems would not cut it.
The company sent a group to our campus here in East Texas for an Immersive Innovation™ session—three days of intensive brainstorming and collaboration with several great solutions and a couple of wild concepts flowing out. One concept involved using light to recognize a key shape as it was pushed into a lock. As far as we knew, the technology to do this did not exist, but we did not discount it.
At a convention a week later, I walked past a booth for a small electronics company. An optical sensor caught my eye, and a lightbulb went off in my head. I’d just stumbled on the technology that could make our idea for a light-based lock work. I had gone to that convention looking for something, I didn’t know what, but by being prepared with a problem in mind, a solution appeared.
I call this top-of-the-funnel serendipity, since getting the right solution to drop out of the bottom starts with what you put into the top. Instead of starting with a solution and looking for a relevant problem, you start with a problem. As Charles Kettering said, “A problem well stated is a problem half solved.” With the problem clear, you can cast your mind about for possible solutions and, more often than not, stumble onto what you need.
Where Preparation Meets Opportunity#
The Roman philosopher Seneca said, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
Whether you stumble onto a solution and recognize what problem it solves, or you start with a problem and go searching for the needed technology, the mechanism is the same: a prepared, open mind making connections.
Really, this is just innovating 101. Believe in the possibilities, do the legwork, and pay attention. You’d be amazed how often the universe cooperates when you bother to show up prepared. Good luck and good inventing!