Entrepreneurs will tell you that most innovations, inventions and businesses were started serendipitously. For example, dynamite was discovered accidentally by Alfred Nobel.
French scientist Louis Pasteur discovered the principle of vaccination against preventable diseases when he inoculated chickens with cholera bacteria.
It is reported that the chickens were supposed to die; however, they did not. They were sick for a while but recovered. When he used a fresh culture of the bacteria in the repeat experiment, the chickens were not sick.
Serendipitously, he had discovered vaccination. Similarly, Charles Goodyear accidentally discovered the vulcanisation of rubber. This happened when he heated natural rubber with sulphur.
What is serendipity?
It is often referred to as the case when one is in search of one thing and in the process, something else of greater or equal value results. It is what others call the ‘magical moments of discovery”.
A word of warning to the idle dreamers — serendipity is hard, laborious and demanding work. It has nothing to do with luck or chance as it is often portrayed in business and other literature.
Serendipity requires a keen and sharp mind to recognise it when it presents itself.
Louis Pasteur encapsulated this observation when he said ‘chance favours only the prepared mind”. For the would-be entrepreneurs or aspiring business owners waiting for your serendipity or ‘aha” moments, here are some pointers to consider: You need to have passion for what you are doing. It is about having a boundless enthusiasm for what you are engaged in. Some regard this as going for the home stretch.
With passion and enthusiasm the long, arduous hours spent on a task amount to a labour of love. It is during that process of toiling away at a task that the moment of serendipity presents itself. You must have the courage to take risks, accept challenges and failure and yet keep on plugging away.
Success and failure are two sides of the same coin. Many of life’s great achievers realise that the path to the goal of realising their dreams is full of obstacles and challenges.
It is how you deal with them that presents you with the serendipitous moment which some people call luck. But as stated earlier, luck has nothing to do with it and according to Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock, the harder one works, the luckier one becomes.
To expect your serendipity moment, you must know your ‘stuff” — you must know what you are doing and, indeed, be competent in whatever endeavour you are in. Being almost good is not good enough.
You must be excellent, for it is out of excellence that great discoveries arise. Finally, you must be open-minded: willing to embrace different and novel ideas.
Albert Einstein once said: ‘We can’t solve problems using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” We must think differently and we can only do that by opening up to new ideas.
Serendipity is therefore not about luck or happenstance. It is a lot of hard work, perseverance and persistence. Anyone who wants to pass through the door of serendipity will find the door labelled, ‘Push Hard”, because it will only favour the prepared and hardworking.
Professor David N Abdulai is the chief executive and executive director of the UNISA Graduate School of Business Leadership (SBL)