I was having a lovely lunch with a friend the other day. She waved enthusiastically at a gent on another table. They’d been introduced at an exhibition a few years ago and had got talking. Not long after, at a sporting event with a friend from her Book Club, she’d run into him again. She made introductions and they got talking. They discovered that he had a product to sell and she had a retail space available — a new collaboration was born. Meanwhile, there was another project stuck in the pipeline and only when he later introduced her to his friend and they got talking that the solution was found — which lead to the creation of the fantastic new restaurant we happened to be eating in.Serendipity: that fortuitous, "happy accident", when we find something good or useful while not specifically searching for it.When people come together, share information and are open to possibilities, opportunities can be seized and new ideas, sparked. Serendipity is the buzzword of innovation, and recognition of its importance for growing business and creating ventures is on the rise. Some of the world’s most successful companies (e.g. Google, Yahoo, Apple) even factor serendipity into their business models and daily operations, trying to orchestrate these seemingly ‘lucky encounters’ to promote creativity and increase production.Software developers and authors, Thor Muller and Lane Becker, researched serendipitous success and the art (or perhaps science) of harnessing this luck, in their book, "Get Lucky: How to Put Planned Serendipity to Work for You and Your Business" (Jossey-Bass, 2012).The ideas that Muller and Becker highlight as drawing in serendipitous opportunity are apparent in several well-known organisations.Connection & Motion. The more people we meet and connect with, the more likely we are to find the knowledge or idea, skill, financing, space etc, that spurs a collaboration or innovation.Tony Hsieh, who in 2009 sold the online shoe store, Zappos, to Amazon.com for $1.2 billion, highly values serendipity in the workplace. He encourages densely populated work environments, “You want to get all these creative people in a statistically small space,” he said, and that he pays attention to the flow of the space to get as many different people connecting as possible."Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people and impromptu team meetings," writes Yahoo CEO, Marissa Mayer, who cited this kind of serendipity as one reason for her recent controversial move to end telecommuting for Yahoo employees and bring everyone back into the office.Breaking out of routine is key to harnessing serendipity, according to Muller and Becker. Hsieh said he encouraged his managers to spend 10 to 20 percent of their time outside of the office with their teams, reporting that external activities and encounters with colleagues increased productivity.Activation and Preparation. We can create activities to open our awareness to new possibilities and cultivate our curiosity so that we are ‘in the line of fire’ for ideas, knowledge, products etc, we can utilise. Keeping abreast of developments and extending our scope of knowledge increases the realms in which we can find opportunity.The internet has facilitated all manner of serendipitous connection through social networking and through promotion of shared knowledge. For example, internet start-up, Quora, who say their “mission is to share and grow the world's knowledge", has had usership triple in the past year. Other platforms of knowledge exchange have soared in popularity, and locally we benefit from opportunities like TEDxBermuda, PechaKucha, and community movements like Chewstick.Divergence. We need to be willing to see the possibilities when an opportunity is presented and not being too fixed on an outcome or plan. An example, in the sixties, Dr Spencer Silver, a scientist at the US company 3M, was trying to develop a super-strong adhesive but accidentally created a not-too-sticky, reusable glue. He could have just binned it and said, ‘not what I was looking for’. But instead he recognised an opportunity. Although it took over five years, he and a colleague Art Fry eventually used it in creating the ‘Post-it note’.Attraction. Opportunity cannot find us unless we put our purpose out into the world. If those folks in my first example hadn’t shared their passions and ideas with the people they’d met, they wouldn’t have discovered their commonality and connection.Permeability. Many successful organisations are doing away with the ‘no peeking at my answers’ type of isolation and separation from the competition and others and replacing it with an open exchange of information. Sharing ideas and resources can often result in an unexpected win/win. Author Stephen R. Covey calls this Synergy and it is the sixth of his “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” (Free Press, 2004). He writes, “Synergy is always exciting and tenuous because you are never quite sure what it’s going to lead to. All you know is that it’s going to be better than before, better than what either party could come up with themselves.”Collaboration is my personal word of the week. Like Marissa Mayer, I believe that increasing face-to-face collaboration will improve performance, and so am pleased to share that to this end, I have recently joined the team at Benedict Associates Ltd, in Hamilton. For me, sharing knowledge and best practice as part of a team, broadening clientele and bringing my skills to EAP, while being in town and the hub of where things are happening, is promising to be a major win.Every social interaction can be profitable — be it financially, socially or personally enriching. Some tips for orchestrating your Serendipity:l Speak about your passions with everyonel Listen carefully to othersl Actively seek out environments of opportunity — moving in different circles, meeting new people, converging with others related to your field and beyond (conferences, courses, lectures, networking groups etc.) and encourage or deliberately position others to do the same.l Practice flexibilityl Look for trends, niches, gaps, areas for improvement, problems needing solutions and solutions waiting to fit a probleml Make better use of social networking, not just to share holiday snaps but to expand your circle. Use the ‘pulling power’ (influence and connections) of friends/colleagues and employees to bring in business, increase connections and grow ideas.l Be prepared to seize the opportunity when it arises: open to possibility and have a business card at hand, or your portfolio ready, a pitch line prepared etc. and set aside contingency time for the unscheduledWe may not be able to make serendipity happen, but we can certainly throw ourselves in its way and up our chances. Be lucky.Julia Pitt is a trained Success Coach and certified NLP practitioner with Benedict Associates Ltd. Telephone (441)295-2070 or visit www.juliapittcoaching.com for further information.