Through exploring the world of abundance that we live in today with deep curiosity and inquisition, I have sought to create environments of serendipity. Part of the intention in doing this is because it is easy to participant and engage in a space of abundance but how might you discover the hidden gems in amongst the noise?

Serendipitous interactions are often the ones that don’t appear at first glance, they are the ones that you have to look at little bit harder for, or shift the point that you are looking from in order to create a different rendering to the lens you are using. There are moments of instant serendipitous exchange, but in my experience these are incredibly rare. The initial friction point is what creates the desire to explore and uncover what may lie under the surface that might not be visible.

I can’t quite recall where I read or heard this first, but Steve Jobs famously said that he had designed Pixar’s head quarters in a way that allowed (and prompted) serendipitous exchanges between different departments. Largely in part because he believed that serendipity was an essential ingredient for creativity.

What does it mean to seize serendipity and perhaps more importantly how might one seize serendipity? Bear in mind that the answer is open for interpretation by the reader, these are just some of the observations that I have had through my own journey of exploring serendipity.

To seize serendipity requires a push out into the unknown. When we enter the unknown our senses are attune to the new environment and we are far more aware of our surroundings than when we are in a space of high familiarity.

How might one do this?

• Engage wtih a thinker’s thinking whose views challenge the views you hold
• Throw yourself into the deep end
• Read deep and wide
• Seek inspiration for different industries and spaces
• Combine unrelated complex and explore the use of metaphors to find threads between them
• Push the edges with your outputs and ask more questions of your own thinking

I took inspiration for this piece from the saying “carpe diem” - seize the day. It’s a powerful mantra and we should definitely all seize the day. However in a world of abundance humans naturally gravity to the familiar and this is the primary reason of why I feel an urge to encourage us to seize the serendipity.

Magic comes from environments that promote the interactions between areas that are seemingly unrelated at first glance.

Seize the serendipity.