Serendipity and Strategy in Rapid Innovation T
Serendipity and strategy in rapid innovation T. M. A. Fink∗†, M. Reevesz, R. Palmaz and R. S. Farry yLondon Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Mayfair, London W1K 2XF, UK ∗Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, France zBCG Henderson Institute, The Boston Consulting Group, New York, USA Abstract. Innovation is to organizations what evolution is to organ- process. isms: it is how organisations adapt to changes in the environment Serendipity. On the other hand, a serendipitous approach is and improve. Yet despite steady advances in our understanding of seen in firms like Apple, which is notoriously opposed to mak- evolution, what drives innovation remains elusive. On the one hand, ing innovation choices based on incremental consumer demands, organizations invest heavily in systematic strategies to accelerate in- novation. On the other, historical analysis and individual experience and Tesla, which has invested for years in their vision of long- suggest that serendipity plays a significant role in the discovery pro- distance electric cars [13]. In science, many of the most impor- cess. To unify these two perspectives, we analyzed the mathematics of tant discoveries have serendipitous origins, in contrast to their innovation as a search process for viable designs across a universe of published step-by-step write-ups, such as penicillin, heparin, component building blocks. We then tested our insights using histor- X-rays and nitrous oxide [9]. The role of vision and intuition ical data from language, gastronomy and technology. By measuring the number of makeable designs as we acquire more components, tend to be under-reported: a study of 33 major discoveries in we observed that the relative usefulness of different components is biochemistry \in which serendipity played a crucial role" con- not fixed, but cross each other over time.
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