Serendipity, Luck and Coincidence

Definitions of Serendipity

• A word coined by Horace Walpole, who says (1754) that he had formed it upon the title of the fairy-tale 'The Three Princes of Serendip', the heroes of which 'were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of'
• Serendip, a former name for Sri Lanka (Ceylon)
• OED: The faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident. Also, the fact or an instance of such a discovery. Formerly rare, this word and its derivatives have had wide currency in the 20th century.

Famous Examples of Serendipity

• Rubber
  Vulcanization of rubber, by Charles Goodyear. He accidentally left a piece of rubber mixture with sulfur on a hot plate, and produced vulcanized rubber
• The Microwave Oven
  was invented by Percy Spencer while testing a magnetron for radar sets at Raytheon, he noticed that a peanut candy bar in his pocket had melted when exposed to radar waves.
• Post-It Notes
  Used a failed glue which was not sticky enough, the inventor got fed up with the bits of paper he used to mark sections in his hymn book falling out that he suddenly thought of a use for a unique non-permanent glue his company had invented but had never found a use for.
• Vaseline
  A chemist working for an old company noticed that the oil-workers would rub a white excretion from the pipes onto scratches and would, he took some home and Vaseline Petroleum Jelly was born.
• Velcro
  A Swiss Engineer out walking was annoyed by the Burrs which attach to you when you are out walking. He examined one and found the burr had lots of little hooks. It took him then years to develop Velcro but it only became popular when Astronauts started using it.

Serendipity and our Success

Serendipity Quotes

• "Serendipity. Look for something, find something else, and realize that what you've found is more suited to your needs than what you thought you were looking for." Lawrence Block
• you don't reach Serendib by plotting a course for it. You have to set out in good faith for elsewhere and lose your bearings serendipitously." John Barth, The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor
• "Serendipity is the faculty of finding things we did not know we were looking for." Glauco Ortolano

My Own Examples Of Serendipity

• Routemaster Buses
  
  Years ago a friend who was conducting interviews for a high-powered job, related the story of an interviewee who had bizarrely rambled on and on about The Reliable Routemaster Bus and thus lost any chance of getting the job. Then one day when going for coffee I came across a Routemaster bus which was being used for publicity for some venture, some days later I created my lens on the the Routemaster bus which has turned out to be one of my most successful lens.
• Abandoned Airfields
  I was doing a lens on former
  WW2 Airfields when my researches revealed that I was working on the site of the former Witney Aerodrome.
• Nena 99 Balloons
  This pop song was a big hit, although it was in German she sang so clearly it was quite easy to understand the meaning. This awakened my interest in German and I started to study it. Then a chance of being transferred to work in Stuttgart came up, next minute we were moving there and started our married life there; all that from a Pop Song!