Designing Opportunities for Serendipity
Designing opportunities for Serendipity becomes an essential attribute for Leadership. Yet another takeaway that I got from reading the book from Frank J. Barrett Yes to the Mess. My initial reaction to this sentence was of surprise. The word Serendipity is defined as the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way. It was coined in 1754 by Horace Walpole, suggested by The Three Princes of Serendip, the title of a Persian fairy tale translated in the XVI century in Italian, and in which the heroes ‘were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of’. So the idea of designing for Serendipity seems an oxymoron. But after reading the book, I started reasoning a couple of other points. Francesca Gino mentions in her book Rebel Talent, the story of how Steve Jobs oversaw the construction of the main Pixar building that today carries his name. It was Jobs who came with the idea of having a very large atrium that every Pixar employee would have to pass through each day, enabling random encounters and conversations (…) The only bathrooms on the first floor of the building are …