Value of Serendipity
Though most inventions take years to develop, sometimes, all it takes is an accident.
The Three Components of Serendipity
Have a prepared mind, be ready to get inspired by anything and any time.
Observe and notice usual and unusual things with an open mind and new eyes.
Be passionate about creating innovative and valuable connections.
Tips for Developing Serendipity
Adopt an attitude of a Loving Creator, keep your mind open, and be prepared to discover entrepreneurial opportunities for value innovation any time and everywhere.
Search for inspiration and entrepreneurial opportunities always and everywhere – and inspiration and entrepreneurial opportunities will search for you.
Remember, nothing makes you blinder than a point of view. Learn to unlearn. You need to look at the things inside and outside you with new eyes if you want to make discoveries.
When an experiment doesn't produce an expected result, don't discard it outright. Refresh your curiosity and experiment with the unexpected outcome to see what comes out of it.
In partnership negotiations, expect to discover unexpected advantages or benefits incurred due to positive synergy effects of the alliance.

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SERENDIPITY: 8 TIPS
Have your mind prepared for learning, new insights and thinking outside the box. Be creatively dissatisfied and expect to make an accidental discovery any moment.
Be observant. Keep your eyes and mind open at all times. Look at everything around you as doors to inspiration and new discoveries.
Be passionate about making innovative and valuable connections. Motivate yourself to look for and notice unanticipated and unsought until it becomes a habit.
Curiously notice outside-the-box remarks of outsiders who look at the things that are usual to you with new eyes.
Be sagacious enough to link together apparently innocuous facts in order to gain a breakthrough insight and discover serendipitous value.
Create knowledge not by processing information but rather by cross-pollinating ideas, subjective insights, intuitions, and hunches.
Develop a subconscious ability and habit to connect randomly picked things, solutions, words, thoughts or ideas in an unusual, meaningful and synergistic way.
Silence your thinking mind and let the guidance from the subconscious and intuitive mind instead of the thinking mind bring you to the state of afflatus, enlightenment and comprehension.
 

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Design for Stimulating and Supporting Serendipity

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by Others

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10 Examples of Serendipity in Social Business

One of the main reasons for an enterprise to embrace internal transparency and social collaboration tools is to create an environment where serendipity happens on a regular basis.

Serendipity means a fortunate happenstance or a pleasant surprise. It is an event that happens unexpectedly. Perhaps the most famous instance of serendipity is the discovery of penicillin through accidental contamination of laboratory samples.

In the context of social collaboration, serendipity means that you receive unexpected help or information, often from a person you did not know had expertise in the subject.

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SERENDIPITY
erendipity – others call it luck or Divine Intervention – means a “fortunate happenstance” or “pleasant surprise”.

It was coined by Horace Walpole in 1754.

In a letter, he wrote to a friend explaining an unexpected discovery he had made by reference to a Persian fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendipity.

The princes, he told his correspondent, were “always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things that they were not in quest of”.

To mention a few, Archimedes, Newton, Marie Curie, Velcro, Super Glue, and Post-it Note  and many other discoveries.

Serendipity had a role to play in all the accomplishments of those businesses, inventions, and endeavors.

What I had in common with these people was the wish to do something, and the perseverance to pursue the lightbulb-idea to discover some opportunities.

Examples of serendipity in business
Serendipitous experiences are vital both in the creative and business realms.

According to James Heaton;

Serendipity is a combination of things: actively setting up opportunities, a willingness to go with the flow of events, the ability to see the thing that arises by chance, and finally, being ready to seize the opportunity—prepared both in the sense of being open to the possibility and ready to take advantage of it.

Serendipity is a significant factor in both the creative process and the business process
These are valuable ideas to anyone in business.
If I look at how companies are linked up in a cycle of sellers, employees, customers—they all have this one thing in common:

They all emanated from some linkages of random, circumstantial connections that led to the formation of an event.

Serendipity has occurred to me in many circumstances and I have developed a particular kind of faith in it. And when serendipity occurs, there is some unexplainable and uncontrollable flow of events.

I can certainly learn that serendipity happens as it did the way I started and developed my business.

My “luck” happened on the Internet. I started in a chatroom, then used all serendipity engines like Linkedin, blogging, websites, chatrooms.

I am not a great blogger, but 100% of my business was forged through social media.

By networking, joining online groups, sharing my thoughts and ideas, my serendipitous moments had started to unfold.

Through social media management, the rate of meeting the right people at the right time and place occurred.

Facilitating or inducing Serendipity using Social Media
In facilitating serendipity through social media, the posts, blogs, or content must be goal-directed.

The goal is to meet people and create synergistic relationships that may lead to the fulfillment of your vision.

With the well-written materials, appropriate keywords, and with the utilization of search engine optimization (SEO) to increase your post’s or blog’s searchability, the possibility of chance encounters is higher.

By focusing on your target audience’s interests, giving them some inspirational posts, problem-solving blogs, and helpful tips, there is a greater chance of encountering like-minded people.

THESIS

Entrepreneurial serendipity is often the reason behind a new business and a driving force of the process of growth of an opportunity-driven firm.

Entrepreneurial serendipity is taught at the Innompic University (Innompirsity). Entrepreneurial serendipity contests were pionered at 5th World Innompic Games 2021.

This thesis investigates the role of serendipity, effectuation, and entrepreneurial marketing
in fast-growth entrepreneurial firms. Using a qualitative paradigm, multiple case studies and
cross-country approaches, the study aims to explore the interrelationships among these constructs
and answer the main research question relating to their contribution to fast growth.
“Entrepreneurial Serendipity” as another distinctive pattern in entrepreneurship, whereby
entrepreneurs look for any opportunity to start a business and explore an appropriate opportunity
that comes along. Further analyses illustrate that entrepreneurs believe in the occurrence of
serendipity in their day-to-day business; however, it indirectly contributes to fast growth
mediated by two important elements: effectual thinking and entrepreneurial marketing.
serendipity, that is, elements of chance that may profoundly
alter a firm’s growth path. For small firms, reaction to specific opportunities may be a
crucial competitive advantage,
Using new discoveries in science as an analogy for new opportunities in entrepreneurship
may help researchers to consider the concept of serendipity in entrepreneurship. Since the new
definitions of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial firms are built upon exploring new
opportunities (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000), new firms are the artefacts, or tools, that
entrepreneurs use to exploit new opportunities or build new markets, sometimes in a serendipitous manner.
The occurrence of serendipity is just one part of the story. The ability to realise that
serendipity has happened is another and maybe the crucial part. Before Isaac Newton’s discovery,
many people would have seen things fall, but his special knowledge and ability to recognise
serendipity in the moment helped him to think about the force behind the fall – the gravity.
Similarly, serendipity can help entrepreneurs to see desired and undesired opportunities, but they
need special abilities to realise and use it. Alertness, networks, knowledge and
experience are some elements that may help them to recognise and explore a serendipitous
moment, and exploit the opportunity effectuatively (Sarasvathy, 2001, 2008).
This study investigates the effects of two concepts, effectuation and entrepreneurial
marketing (EM), on the exploitation of new opportunities. Effectuation is the predominant logic
of exploiting new opportunities in entrepreneurial firms (Sarasvathy, 2001, 2008). This logic
assists entrepreneurs to exploit new opportunities with their available means and create a number
of possible goals. Effectuation could also be the logic to exploit serendipitous opportunities
(Sarasvathy, 2001). Since marketing knowledge and ability are important skills for entrepreneurs
to have in order to recognise and use new opportunities (Carson & Gilmore, 2000a; Shane, 2000),
and marketing in entrepreneurial firms is effectuative and interwoven with effectuation logic
(Hills & Hultman, 2011a), effectuation logic and entrepreneurial marketing can be seen as
strategies to exploit new opportunities in the marketplace.
Thus, this thesis conceptualises the role of accidental opportunity exploration (through
luck, chance, fate, fortune, etc.) in serendipity and discusses how serendipity influences
opportunity exploration in entrepreneurship and how it affects the growth of the firms. We further
conceptualise the ability of entrepreneurs to explore serendipitous opportunities and exploit them
through effectuation logic and entrepreneurial marketing, and develop a model that shows a
trajectory to fast growth in entrepreneurial firms. Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to
explore how entrepreneurial firms achieve fast growth by investigating the influence of
serendipity, effectuation logic, and entrepreneurial marketing on that growth. Exploring these
three factors will potentially shed some light on understanding how firms exploit new
opportunities that lead to intended (or unintended) growth.
Thus, the main research question is:
RQ: How do serendipity, effectuation logic, and entrepreneurial marketing affect
fast growth in entrepreneurial firms?
In order to address the main question, the investigation will be guided by the following
questions:
RQ1: How does serendipity manifest in entrepreneurial opportunity exploration and
how does it affect a firm’s fast growth?
RQ2: How do entrepreneurs use effectual reasoning in relation to a firm’s fast
growth?
RQ3: How do entrepreneurs use entrepreneurial marketing in relation to a firm’s
fast growth?
RQ4: What are the interrelationships between serendipity, effectuation, and EM in
fast-growth firms?