The Science of Serendipity PDF Download

Author: Thalia Soren
Publisher: Independently Published
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Discover "The Science of Serendipity: Making Your Own Luck" - Your Ultimate Guide to Transforming Fortune into a Choice, Not a Chance! In a world where the unexpected often dictates the course of our lives, "The Science of Serendipity" emerges as a groundbreaking guide, revealing the secret to tilting the scales of luck in your favor. This book isn't just about understanding the whims of fortune; it's a masterclass in actively crafting a life brimming with opportunities, serendipitous encounters, and yes, your own, self-made luck. Inside "The Science of Serendipity," you will unearth: The Serendipity Mindset: Transform your thinking to see the world as a playground of possibilities. Powerful Networking Strategies: Learn how authentic connections can open doors to unexpected opportunities. Intuition vs. Logic: Master the art of trusting your gut and making it your most powerful ally in decision-making. Goal Setting Reimagined: Set intentions that attract serendipity and adapt to life's unpredictability. The Art of Experimentation: Embrace the power of trial and error as a path to unforeseen successes. Leveraging Adversity: Turn challenges into your greatest opportunities. Digital Dynamics of Luck: Harness the potential of technology to multiply your chances of serendipitous encounters. Whether you're a dreamer, a doer, an entrepreneur, or anyone seeking to inject a dose of the extraordinary into your everyday life, "The Science of Serendipity" is your key to unlocking a world where luck is not left to fate but is yours to create. Grab your copy and embark on a life-transforming journey towards making your own luck!

Author: Quan-Hoang Vuong
Publisher: Walter De Gruyter GmbH
ISBN: 8366675858
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
When you type the word “serendipity” in a word-processor application such as Microsoft Word, the autocorrection engine suggests you choose other words like “luck” or “fate”. This correcting act turns out to be incorrect. However, it points to the reality that serendipity is not a familiar English word and can be misunderstood easily. Serendipity is a very much scientific concept as it has been found useful in numerous scientific discoveries, pharmaceutical innovations, and numerous humankind’s technical and technological advances. Therefore, there have been many books written around the concept. So why do we need this additional book? This is not just another book about serendipity. It has evolved from the Editor’s question lingering for a decade after finishing his widely cited article (coauthored with Prof. Nancy K. Napier of Boise State University, ID, USA) “Serendipity as a strategic advantage?” in T. Wilkinson’s edited volume Strategic Management in the 21st Century, published by Praeger. The Editor and contributing authors have tried to achieve the following in this title. Demystifying the Serendipity Myth The phenomenon of serendipity has always been thought of as a “miracle”. It is the mystery of human innovation and one of the ultimate secrets of our society. But serendipity is not just a lucky coincidence nor any hidden conspiracy. This book explores the science of the information process behind this seemingly miraculous phenomenon. It connects human society with nature, going back to the root of our existence and looking at the flame of survival to discover the harmony in making creativity. Presenting the nuts and bolts of being an adventurer of science The authors present their conceptual investigations into serendipity’s nature and its mechanism by examining interesting real events and stories. The content is thought-provoking, and readers are led to question and explore their own life stories and problems along the journey of reading this book. Catching an elusive high-value target requires great strategies and efforts. But there are no dark secrets here because this is the “way of nature” – how we humans have always strived for innovation without realizing the blueprints behind such processes. Unlike other books on serendipity, this book will show you that a powerful “secret” is closer than you think. Delivering practical uses for different audiences By understanding the conditionality and survival drivers of serendipity, individuals or organizations can make better decisions on creating the right environment to facilitate the encounter and attainment of this valuable phenomenon. For scientists: With clear explanations of the information processes underlying serendipity, flexible theoretical frameworks of mindsponge and the 3D principle of creativity, researchers are provided with the tools they need to dig deeper into their own fields of study and find practical applications, be it psychology, economics, sociology, or anything that involves innovation (which is, in fact, every scientific discipline). For curious casual readers: Everybody needs innovation to make breakthroughs or spice up one’s life. If you think great ideas come to people randomly from an unknown fairy place, this book will convince you otherwise without taking away that awe and wonder. But above all, you will know how to become more creative, scientifically and straightforwardly, with no snake oil and no weird tricks. For ambitious business people: The flame that brought about great successes throughout human history is within you. But you can only use it if you understand it. While others wait for serendipity to come, you will be able to actively hunt for those precious moments. As it has always been: the best hunters triumph, not the passive wanderers. And in this age of information chaos, finding the golden fruits is not easy. Those from information technology know this problem well, and this book is the treasure map that they have been seeking to navigate that stormy ocean looking for jewels. Like a kingfisher tracking its prey through the water, waiting to gracefully strike, with serendipity, a person seizes the prize of creativity amid the chaos of life. ¤ ¤ ¤ Official introduction: The book explores the nature, underlying causes, and the information processing mechanism of serendipity. It proposes that natural or social survival demands drive serendipity, and serendipity is conditional on the environment and the mindset, on both individual and collective levels. From Darwin's evolution theory to Sun Tzu's war tactics, major innovations throughout human history are unified by this key concept. In the rapidly changing world, information is abundant but rather chaotic. The adaptive power of serendipity allows people to notice treasures within this wild sea, but only for those who understand how it works. To increase the probability of encountering and attaining serendipity, one should employ the mindsponge mechanism and the 3D process of creativity, for without these frameworks, serendipity is truly an elusive target. The book also discusses methods to build environments and cultures rich in navigational and useful information to maximize the chance of finding and capitalizing on serendipity. As a skill, serendipity has a resemblance to how kingfishers observe and hunt their prey.

Author: Dr Christian Busch
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241402131
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
'A wise, exciting and life-changing book' Arianna Huffington, author of Thrive 'In this incisive book, Christian Busch reveals that luck isn't always dumb. People who can see what others don't - who are awake to the high probability of the improbable - can achieve and contribute in ways their more blinkered colleagues cannot. The Serendipity Mindset is a bracing and hopeful antidote to a world addicted to efficiency and control' Daniel H. Pink, bestselling author of When and Drive 'How to create the opportunities for a successful and fulfilling life? Christian Busch shows convincingly that it's more than blind luck in The Serendipity Mindset, which offers excellent practical guidance for all' Paul Polman, former CEO of Unilever and co-founder of IMAGINE ___________________________________________ What if being lucky was a skill that you could master and share with other people? Modern life is full of chance encounters, changing plans, delayed journeys, human errors and other mishaps. So, what if we use such unpredictability to our advantage? Dr Christian Busch has spent a decade exploring how, if acted upon, unexpected encounters can enhance our worldview, expand our social circles and create new professional opportunities. In this book, Christian reveals the secrets behind the hidden force that rules the universe: serendipity. The Serendipity Mindset is a revolutionary, well-researched exploration of a well-researched and essential life skill that we can all develop in a few simple steps. By learning to identify, act on and share serendipity, we can use uncertainty as a pathway to more joyful, purposeful and successful lives. From couples who first interacted during chance encounters to businesspeople who invented multi-million ideas after a best-laid plan misfired, Christian has studied hundreds of subjects who improved their lives by learning to see opportunities in the unexpected.

Author: Matt Kingdon
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118478126
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Innovation. The word might make you think of Silicon Valley. But innovation isn’t the sole province of start-ups. They didn’t invent it, and they’re not always the ones from which we can best learn. As Matt Kingdon argues in The Science of Serendipity, it’s corporate innovators battling within large, established organisations who are the field’s real heroes. Tapping into 20 years of experience on the front lines of innovation—bringing new products and services to market and helping organisations become more creative—Kingdon dissects the ways in which corporations are continually reborn. He looks at the anatomy of innovation, asking: How do time-pressed executives go about taking risks? How do they prepare to see—and seize—opportunity? And how do you place humans, with all of their fears and foibles, at the heart of commercial success? In a conversational, jargon-free style built on a practitioner’s observations and anecdotes, The Science of Serendipity traces the dilemmas that executives in a wide variety of firms face. It details the steps taken to overcome the issues and get great ideas across the finish line. If you’re looking for a guide in your fight against the corporate machine, this is the business book for you. Matt Kingdon is the Co-founder, Chairman, and Chief Enthusiast of What If! Innovation Partners. For 20 years, What If! has partnered with the world’s most successful, forward-looking companies—businesses such as Barclays, Four Seasons, Google, PepsiCo, Pfizer, and Virgin—to galvanise innovation and deliver impact. Its 250 inventors work across the Americas, Europe, and Asia.

Author: Robert K. Merton
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400841526
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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From the names of cruise lines and bookstores to an Australian ranch and a nudist camp outside of Atlanta, the word serendipity--that happy blend of wisdom and luck by which something is discovered not quite by accident--is today ubiquitous. This book traces the word's eventful history from its 1754 coinage into the twentieth century--chronicling along the way much of what we now call the natural and social sciences. The book charts where the term went, with whom it resided, and how it fared. We cross oceans and academic specialties and meet those people, both famous and now obscure, who have used and abused serendipity. We encounter a linguistic sage, walk down the illustrious halls of the Harvard Medical School, attend the (serendipitous) birth of penicillin, and meet someone who "manages serendipity" for the U.S. Navy. The story of serendipity is fascinating; that of The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity, equally so. Written in the 1950s by already-eminent sociologist Robert Merton and Elinor Barber, the book--though occasionally and most tantalizingly cited--was intentionally never published. This is all the more curious because it so remarkably anticipated subsequent battles over research and funding--many of which centered on the role of serendipity in science. Finally, shortly after his ninety-first birthday, following Barber's death and preceding his own by but a little, Merton agreed to expand and publish this major work. Beautifully written, the book is permeated by the prodigious intellectual curiosity and generosity that characterized Merton's influential On the Shoulders of Giants. Absolutely entertaining as the history of a word, the book is also tremendously important to all who value the miracle of intellectual discovery. It represents Merton's lifelong protest against that rhetoric of science that defines discovery as anything other than a messy blend of inspiration, perspiration, error, and happy chance--anything other than serendipity.

Author: Royston M. Roberts
Publisher: Wiley
ISBN: 9780471602033
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Many of the things discovered by accident are important in our everyday lives: Teflon, Velcro, nylon, x-rays, penicillin, safety glass, sugar substitutes, and polyethylene and other plastics. And we owe a debt to accident for some of our deepest scientific knowledge, including Newton's theory of gravitation, the Big Bang theory of Creation, and the discovery of DNA. Even the Rosetta Stone, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the ruins of Pompeii came to light through chance. This book tells the fascinating stories of these and other discoveries and reveals how the inquisitive human mind turns accident into discovery. Written for the layman, yet scientifically accurate, this illuminating collection of anecdotes portrays invention and discovery as quintessentially human acts, due in part to curiosity, perserverance, and luck.

Author: Wendy B. Murphy
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780875022499
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 143

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Author: Telmo Pievani
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262049155
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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From the bestselling author of Imperfection, a theory of uncertainty as the very core of the scientific method—and the essence of its wonder. How many times have we looked for something and found something else? A partner, a job, an object? The same thing happens often to scientists: they design an experiment and discover the unexpected, which usually turns out to be very important. This fascinating phenomenon is called serendipity, which takes its name from the mythical Serendib, a place from which, according to a Persian fable, three princes set off to explore the world, making chance discoveries along the way. In Serendipity, the award-winning author of Imperfection Telmo Pievani returns to weave a compelling story about the unexpected in science and its fascinating role in our understanding of the world. Going far beyond the usual examples of penicillin, X-rays, the microwave oven, and Christopher Columbus, Pievani shows that the most surprising stories of serendipity in the history of science reveal profound aspects of the logic of scientific discovery. In this book, he presents for the first time: an archaeology of the idea; a taxonomy of serendipitous discoveries; an “ecology of serendipity” (the surrounding conditions and factors that can promote it); and lastly, a theory of serendipity (why it occurs so frequently in so many sciences). From Zadig to Sherlock Holmes, Pievani shows that such great discoveries are not just the product of luck. Instead, serendipity comes from a mix of cunning, curiosity, sagacity, imagination, and accidents caught on the fly. Serendipity illuminates how much we don’t know and how much we don't even know we don't know. Above all, Pievani reminds us that the human brain is of a piece with the world it is investigating—a world so much bigger than our knowledge—and it has also evolved within that world, adapting as it has to.

Author: Samantha Copeland
Publisher:
ISBN: 9783031335310
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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This volume brings together for the first time the diverse threads within the growing field of serendipity research, to reflect both on the origins of this emerging field within different disciplines as well as its increasing influence as its own field with foundational texts and emerging practices. The phenomenon of serendipity has been described in many ways since Horace Walpole initially coined the term in 1754 to categorize those discoveries that happen by "both accidents and sagacity". This book offers a sampling of perspectives from experts in serendipity research from organizational studies, management theory, information science and library studies, psychology, literature, computer science, social science, ethics, and the history and philosophy of science. Considerations about the importance and role of serendipity are being raised now across science (both empirical and theoretical) as well as practice (from art and innovation to leadership and governance), with ever more eyes looking closer at its significance in human history and the likelihood it will play a key, while unpredictable, role in forming our future. Serendipity Science represents an emerging, and also important and potentially necessary field of study, if we are to deal well as a society with our complex times and uncertain future.

Author: Robert K. Merton
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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