Serendipity is the key that unlocks strategic advantage
This article also appeared on Forbes and as part of the World Economic Forum’s Davos Agenda 2022
“The future is already here, it is just not very evenly distributed”, said William Gibson famously. One can debate the accuracy of the statement but it is, nevertheless, quite straightforward to find examples of asymmetry in our ability to harness the latest technologies.
In November 2021, the Financial Times reported that the UK National Health Service is “sending X-rays abroad in vast quantities due to an acute shortage of radiologists”. There are now many examples of artificial intelligence outperforming radiologists at analysing X-rays for health issues but this seems to have been overlooked as a solution in this case. Similarly, during the recent shortage of heavy goods vehicle drivers in the UK, news reports were almost entirely focused on how quickly new lorry drivers could be trained, rather than thinking of the possibility of harnessing autonomous trucks to leapfrog the current infrastructure, a solution which has been trialled in many countries including the United States and Singapore.
How is it that we can miss solutions like these, which are already here and which offer the potential for huge strategic advantage, let alone ones just around the corner?
It could be that we are drowning in content, but starved of knowledge. With over four billion pieces of content being created each day, keeping abreast of all that is happening far exceeds our capacity to do so. Further, the business models of social media organisations and news outlets have been increasingly focused on giving people more of what they (or their networks) like, leading to echo chamber effects and making it easy to lose sight of the big picture.
Friedrich Hayek’s “Use of knowledge in society” eloquently made the point that there is always more knowledge outside the organisation than inside it, and his work serves as a reminder that those that are able to break out of their echo chambers have much to gain.
Serendipity is sometimes used to describe the accidental, yet fortuitous, discovery of something, but what if Serendipity could be “engineered” to help people take their blinkers off and escape from groupthink? Just imagine the strategic gains which could be made from having access to a deeply personalised and actionable stream of knowledge, attuned for maximum ability to help you defend against risks or capitalise on opportunity. It would need to include the trends which have the potential to drastically disrupt or improve the status quo and help people triangulate between potential outcomes. Most importantly, it would need to help them act for strategic gain, ahead of the pack.
We felt this to be so important that we built a company around it, called Serendipity AI, and we are on a mission to engineer the serendipitous discovery of knowledge which can be used for strategic advantage.
Our work has led us to identify three important characteristics of knowledge which, when maximised, provide very high potential for strategic advantage. Such knowledge is:
Transformative. What is the potential of the idea being discussed to transform industries, business models, markets or organisations?
Applicable. How relevant is it to your own personal circumstances, organisation or industry?
Actionable. Is it in the sweet-spot of being actionable but not already widely-harnessed?
For example, truly transformational ideas often come from the intersections between two completely different fields or domains — such as virtual reality and education colliding to enable immersive learning experiences about migration. Or 3D printing and biology combining to print human tissue. Underpinning knowledge with a platform which understands these lateral connections between topics and the interests and expertise of people and organisations becomes essential to identifying opportunities for first-mover strategic advantage.
But one shouldn’t have to wade through vast quantities knowledge, even if it is highly relevant. John Hagel told us to“abandon stocks” of knowledge and “embrace flows” over a decade ago now. This was spot on but things have moved on since then. The abundance of content means that the flows are more like raging torrents, perpetually bombarding us with both signal and noise.
We think the future of knowledge involves your digital “sidekick” — one which is always on, always monitoring on your behalf, and always searching out the most strategic and serendipitous opportunities for you to harness in your personal and professional lives. Helping you get ahead, and stay ahead.
