Thanks Dave. I was playing with some similar thinking on a blog post of my own at http://graemen.wordpress.com and made a connection you and the Cynefin domains as I did so. It concerns me that what we affirm in education and in society/business may undermine the possibility of serendipity and non-linear thinking.

Actually the legend of the discovery of penicillin is not necessarily serendipitous. Fleming, much after the fact, stated that in 1928 he noticed a contamination in a sample in his lab. It took 14 years to go from there to the first human treatment with the mold and the famous "cantaloupe" story actually took place in Peoria, Illinois in 1941 where, after a world-wide search, a team of Australian researchers who had fled Oxford during The Blitz were trying to find the best source of the mold. The moldy cantaloupe,which was found in a Peoria market, did indeed provide that source.

I think what this story identifies is the combination of being observant to possible sources of "serendipity" (as was Fleming) followed by a lot of hard work in order to make it all happen. It also demonstrates how the story regarding it's discovery is perpetuated by the way in which the story fits our myths of creativity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin

I think I will hold with the Flemming story Wayne. I had a similar challenge so looked into it (before the Wikipedia) and Flemming noticed the "unwashed petri dish" and brought it to the attention of people working specifically in the field. He had enough of a reputation to be listened to and then the process started. The Cantaloupe story was the result of a deliberate search AFTER the initial discovery and was targeted and finding the best strain.

I agree that chance discovery (serendipity) is always followed by hard work. However I do not thing the story is a myth, as far as I can ascertain it is fact

Louis Pasteur explained it very clearly in in inauguration speech when he became professor and dean in Lille. After he separated the racemic crystals, but before his breakthroughs in microbiology:
quote: "Do you know when it first saw the light, the electric telegraph, one of the most marvellous applications of modern sciences? It was in that memorable year 1822. OErsted, a danish physician, had a copper wire in his hands and used it to link the poles of a Volta pile. On his desk was a magnetic needle on a pivot, and he suddenly saw (by chance, you might argue, but remember that in the field of observation, chance favors the prepared mind ), he suddenly saw the needle move and take a position quite different from that assigned to it by terrestric magnetism. An electric current through a wire changes the direction of a magnetic needle. Here, gentlemen, was the birth of the actual telegraph. Seeing the needle move, would Franklin´s interlocutor not have asked : « But what is the use of this? » And yet it was less than twenty years later that this discovery lead to the application of the electric telegraph, almost supernatural in its effects."

And of course you can enable (not force) this by creating the environment. Pasteur:
"This is like teaching geography by sending the pupil to visit the country. The geography is remembered because one has seen and touched the places. Similarly, your sons will not forget the composition of the air that we breathe once they have analysed it, once they have experienced the admirable properties of the elements using their hands and their eyes.
Without theory, practice is but routine born of habit. Theory alone can bring forward the spirit of invention. It is your task not to share the opinion of those narrow minds who disdain in science everything that does not immediately lead to an application. You know the charming words of Franklin. He participated at the first demonstration of a purely scientific discovery. And someone asks him: But what is the use of this? Franklin replies: « What is the use of the newborn child? » Yes, gentlemen, what is the use of the newborn child? And yet, at that tender age of childhood, the germs of the talents that distinguish you already existed. In your babies, in these susceptible little beings, there are leaders, scientist, and heroes, as valiant as those who are just covering themselves with glory at the walls of Sebastopol. Accordingly, the theoretical discovery has nothing but the merit of pure existence. It raises hope and that is it. But let it be cultivated, let it grow and you will see what it will become."

Serendipity seems to be more the rule than the exception:
http://mortonmeyers.com/index.htm

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9780300082784

We sort of know this at an individual level, but then don't do anything constructive at an organisational level to support it. Guy Claxton's 'Hare Brain Tortoise Mind' led me to propose that we should be allowed to go and watch cricket to support innovative thinking (he didn't mention rugby), but did they give me a budget......

Dave,
I think that the point is that 'serendipity' implies luck, or maybe more accurately, accident. Sawyer (http://www.amazon.com/Explaining-Creativity-Science-Human-Innovation/dp/0195161645/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1201791777&sr=8-3)
argues that the creative events as accidental is usually constructed post hoc. And the narrative (especially strong in the US) surrounding how creative events happen is a factor we have to consider.

Either way I think that to argue that using CE methods allows you to experience accident more often is a bit bizarre. What is really being said is that 'accident' will occur more frequently if you looking at the petri dish versus the pretty girl walking by outside the window!

Wayne

"the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way : a fortunate stroke of serendipity"
ORIGIN 1754: coined by Horace Walpole, suggested by The Three Princes of Serendip, the title of a fairy tale in which the heroes “were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of.”
I thought I would provide the definition Wayne, its not luck, and yes you can manage for it. By increasing the number and type of things that you pay attention too then you increase the chance of serendipity (which is what SenseMaker does) and various methods such as SNS increase the encounter rations with things which are unusual or novel.

From Wikipedia -

Serendipity is the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely. The word derives from an old Persian fairy tale and was coined by Horace Walpole on 28th of January 1754 in a letter he wrote to his friend Horace Mann (not the same man as the famed American educator), an Englishman then living in Florence. The letter read,

"It was once when I read a silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip: as their highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of: for instance, one of them discovered that a mule blind of the right eye had travelled the same road lately, because the grass was eaten only on the left side, where it was worse than on the right—now do you understand serendipity? One of the most remarkable instances of this accidental sagacity (for you must observe that no discovery of a thing you are looking for, comes under this description) was of my Lord Shaftsbury, who happening to dine at Lord Chancellor Clarendon's, found out the marriage of the Duke of York and Mrs. Hyde, by the respect with which her mother treated her at table."

Of course, when Walpole combined 'accident' with 'sagacity' he brought us right back to the idea that 'serendipity' happens to those who are prepared to notice it, rather than mere accident.

This would suggest that to refer to a discovery as serendipitous is being rather redundant, since if we already knew what we were looking for, observation would be simple confirmation versus discovery. Hence all discoveries MUST be serendipitous.

Oh well. Enough semantics for today. I am not sure that the cultural connotations of the word 'serendipity', at least on this side of the Atlantic, are ones that are useful in discussing these topics. At least, not with most of the customers I would have. If serendipity and discovery are synonymous, then I would prefer to use discovery.

Wayne

Wayne

You could always make it serendipitous discovery Wayne, to distinguish it from linear or process based discovery.

... or you make a serendipitous discovery and then attribute it to whatever is appropriate under current needs - which might be process if this is what they want to hear.
Which of course does not mean that process never works. I like good bureacracy - a solid foundation for innovation.