Book Review: The Serendipity Mindset

In an interview he shares some insights for leaders currently navigating the impact of the 2019 nCoV pandemic. –  Of course, not every company has the means to fundamentally shift its entire core business  or production process in the way a few exceptions have been able to do it. Breweries reinvented as hand sanitizer production companies… it’s not something that happens every day.

But the basic principle – the very core of his idea – is that of you pay attention to small things and the unusual. By doing so, you’ll be able to see things through different eyes. This will allow you to ‘reframe’ elements (use them in a different context) and rethink their function.

Cultivating serendipity-spotting – the rediscovery of ‘alertness’ – is another method to source for innovation coming from the assessment of unexpected events. At the same time, Dr. Busch is a supporter of the “de-risking” idea, in which the threshold for contributing ideas is lowered and doesn’t depend on the feasibility of the idea or concept itself. Lastly, he mentions that in this post-COVID world, it is of the utmost importance that a company provides a sense of belonging and acceptance.

At 4P square, we love reading this kind of things. The one-liner that captures this entire book could very well be: “How to create a human-centric prosperous business mentality in a volatile market?”

Modern life is full of chance encounters, changing plans, human errors, and unexpected crises. But what if we could turn such unpredictability into positive outcomes? Interesting idea, no?

Maybe you could compare it to “luck is where preparation and coincidence meet”. Indeed, if you pay attention to the changes around you, and you can stay relevant for your audience and customer base; if you plan many different scenarios, you will be able to recognize a circumstantial event much sooner, and you’ll know what to do. This will give you an advantage.

To people around you it might look like you’re lucky. If you’re lucky all the time (or most of the time), you might actually come to the conclusion that luck is an attitude. Everybody has the power to design a conditional mental library of plausible scenarios, situations, conversations or actions. As soon as one or more of the conditions tied to a scenario can be checked, the reality you find yourself in can be turned into the script you had prepared for the exact situation. It’s like Déjà-Vu, and you’re the director of your own movie. Or of your own life, for that matter.