Finding Opportunity In Chance Events - Part 2

April 25, 2012

Interview with Thor Muller, author of the book Get Lucky: How to Put Planned Serendipity to Work for You and Your Business

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Mike Carruthers:
Luck can be a powerful force for your success if you understand how to use it.

Thor Muller:
Well we all know that there’s such a thing as blind luck when you’re struck by lightning what we talk about is something called serendipity. And serendipity involves chance but it also involves doing something with that chance what we call creativity. 
 

Thor Muller, author of the book Get Lucky...

If you talk to any entrepreneur they will have a serendipity moment in their career and their development of their company – that’s where new ideas come from. They come from this collision between all the work, the hard work that led up to that point and something that wasn’t expected.

An example of planned serendipity is the invention of the post it note, a scientist at 3M was working on a very different project.

He was looking for a strong adhesive for aircraft and when he stumbled upon a very weak adhesive it would have been very easy for him to say that’s irrelevant and for his bosses to say we’re looking for strong adhesives not weak adhesives. But in the case both the scientist and the company itself 3M gave him the space to explain his discovery over the course of years to everybody in the company which allowed this anomaly to eventually find a way to become one of the biggest products.

The process of planned serendipity is inexact and uncertain and yet…

In our research there’s no question that being able to engage with the unknown with uncertainty is a key ingredient for success.

To hear the complete unedited interview, click here.