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Thor Muller certainly thinks that you can plan serendipity!

Thor Muller, CTO and co-founder of the firm Get Satisfaction recently gave a talk, The Practice Planned Serendipity as part of the Unfinished Business series at Ontario College of Art and Design University (OCADU). Before we dive into what Muller said during his talk, first let’s look at what serendipity means.

The Meaning of Serendipity

Horace Walpole, English art historian and politician born in the early 18^th century coined the word serendipity. Walpole who loved to write letters was also known as man of letters. In a letter to Thomas Mann he said that he coined the word serendipity from the Persian fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip. In the tale, the heroes “were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of.”

Image via Wikipedia

As with many things, words often lose part of their meaning, or the meaning is completely changed over a period of time. The way that Walpole used serendipity, sagacity was an important aspect of the definition, which is the “ability to link together apparently innocuous facts to come to a valuable conclusion.” According to Wikipedia, “Serendipity is a propensity for making fortunate discoveries while looking for something unrelated.”

In Muller’s talk, he indicated that serendipity occurs when chance interacts with creativity. Therefore it’s possible to plan the conditions for serendipity to take place.

Getting to Serendipity

There are eight ways that anyone can experience serendipity in a planned way.

Collision: Serendipity requires motion. You cannot have serendipity without collision. Get out there – run into more people and participate in more events.

Preparation: Prepare your mind for serendipity and there are three ways to do so.

1. Obsessive Curiosity
2. Arrest an Exception: Have dogged determination. Hang on until you figure “it” out.
3. Forget What you Know to be True: Nothing is sacred

Divergence: Be ready to divert from the original plan. Take another direction. There are two ways to divert.

1. Branch-out: Take a different fork in the road. Branch-out from another branch, explore the possibilities.
2. Spread Seeds: Spin off new components.

Commitment: You achieve serendipity when you stick to it, you are unwilling to divert from your cause. You know what your mission is and you adhere to it.

Connection: You run into the right people because of your network of connections – because you know the right people.

Porosity: You move the centre of gravity from within your company out to the customers and magic can happen.

Activation: We create the space for serendipity to occur. For instance, there is a certain individual that you’d like to meet, plan on how you can meet her. You could have a party and invite people who know her and encourage them to bring her along. So you create the space for serendipity to take place by having the party.

Additional Information on Serendipity

The Three Princes of Serendip, Part One

Making Science by Serendipity. A review of Robert K. Merton and Elinor Barber’s The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity

The Three Princes of Serendip and the Merchant 

Now that I have attended Thor Muller’s lecture on The Practice Planned Serendipity, I am ready to test the waters.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

During the past 10 years, many online learning tools and resources have cropped up to assist the self-learner at an affordable price: University Open Courseware, Wikipedia, You Tube Edu, iTunes U, eduFire, and Learn.com are a few of the educational resources that you can use to build your body of knowledge.

Wikipedia: Is a free encyclopedia created by users and is the world’s largest encyclopedia. Wikipedia is one of the first places to start research when trying to build a body of knowledge in any area.

You Tube Edu: You Tube worked with universities and colleges to create video and audio lectures by the best professors in the United States and made them available for free.

iTunes U: A mobile way of learning, iTunes U provides over 200,000 lectures, presentations, videos, readings, and podcasts from all over the world, for download. Some of the content has been created by the best professors in the United States. Many universities have a separate website for iTunes courseware download.

eduFire SuperPass: Is a response to the rapid rise in the cost of education. A paid subscription-based virtual classroom, eduFire offers live audio and video learning.

Learn.com: Offers courses to develop individual skills. It is also an on demand workplace development and productivity resource.

And, if you are someone who like a good speech, here are a few websites to delight you:

http://www.famousquotes.me.uk/speeches/presidential-speeches/index.htm

http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/previous.htm

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/top100speechesall.html

http://www.history.com/video.do?name=speeches

Using just a percentage of the online resources mentioned above will set you apart from your peers. Your self-learning journey will not be easy, but with focus, determination and passion to do what it takes to succeed, you will get that edge that is needed for a recession proof career.

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Photo Credits: Avil Beckford Orchid in Jamaica

Sometimes it is okay to go down the rabbit hole because you never know where it might lead. Acting on your curiosity often leads to wonderful discoveries. I was reading John Forde’s e-newsletter article “Short Words, Bigger Word Power,” in which he talks about his friend David Deutsch giving him Gelett Burgess’ essay “Short Words Are Words of Might.”

I have never heard of Gelett Burgess, and the name of the essay intrigued me so I wanted to find out more. I conducted an internet search and came across the poem The Purple Cow and got the idea for this blog post.

The Purple Cow

(Reflections on a Mythic Beast Who’s Quite Remarkable, at Least)

I NEVER saw a Purple Cow;

I never hope to See One;

But I can Tell you, Anyhow,

I’d rather See than Be One.

By Gelett Burgess (1866 – 1951)

What is a purple cow? Cows are not purple, so a purple cow must be an anomaly. Reading the Wikipedia entries for the many ways in which the purple cow phrase is used, it states, “the examples retain the common theme of a sense of something out of the ordinary.” The poem also reminded me of Seth Godin’s book Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable, which I read over five years ago.

The subtitle – Reflections on a Mythic Beast Who’s Quite Remarkable, at Least – for the poem is very telling. A Purple Cow is a metaphor for something that is out of the ordinary, something remarkable. Would you want to have experiences that are out of the ordinary? I would! And, would you want to be a Purple Cow?

Standing out is not necessarily a bad thing. What if you were a pioneer? Wouldn’t it feel great to be a leader, to establish a trend, to be first to market?

Today, too many people conform, and many do not want to take a chance and be that Purple Cow, to stand out from the rest. To conform is to be comfortable, and many of us like to feel comfortable. How about for today, we step outside of our comfort zone, and do something that is not very comfortable, do something remarkable.

I may be out to lunch, and that is okay, but, what does The Purple Cow poem mean to you? And would you want to be a Purple Cow, even if it is only for today?

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Gelett Burgess and the blurb

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Phot Credits: Public Domain