Serendipity, the perfect solution you never thought of

While enjoying a morning read of the The Big Shift a series of thought threads spawned when my eyes quickly scanned this comment, “Serendipity works best when we extend the edges of our social networks”.

From wikipedia, “Serendipity is the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely.”  As long as you are seeking something, you have the potential for creating what you never conceived of.

This intriguing word describes the pull of ultra popular crowd sourcing sites: Digg, Stumble Upon, Reddit, Yahoo Buzz, Hacker News.  This may be partly responsible for the pull of other social media sites as well.  It’s not an uncommon occurrence to be casually browsing your favorite social site (YouTube, Squidoo, MySpace, Faceboook, or twitter) and come across a completely unrelated yet fascinating web find.

What does luck have to do with finding and developing one’s calling?  What does serendipity have to do with self discovery?  It may have a lot more to do than I first considered.  If you know you are looking for something, finding it isn’t a novel discovery.  If instead you keep yourself open to new ideas and views, and continually interact with the world, be it nature, friends, or social internet “gatherings”, you are stacking the odds in favor of discovering the perfect solution you never thought of.

Anyone, be they entrepreneur or artisan, will have a huge competitive advantage when they achieve mastery in the fine art of serendipitous discovery.