Is Serendipity Replaceable?

In a recent article, Dr. Gleb Tsipursky , the acclaimed "Office Whisperer", acknowledges a familiar hurdle in the remote work lanscape: the challenge of sustaining innovation. He then suggests the integration of Generative AI into the brainstorming processes as a way to bridge the gap between the old office world, where serendipity was a commonplace occurance, and the new office-less remote work world where serendipity is hard to replicate.

As Michael Arena , the world's expert on Organizational Network Analysis notes: "Before the pandemic, many organizations left these so-called, serendipitous encounters to chance, with employees occasionally stumbling upon valuable insights by pure accident".

But what exactly is "serendipity"?

According to Horace Walpole, who coined the term in 1754, his intention was to create a word that would reflect the Persial fairy tale "The Three Princes of Senedip", whose heroes "were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of".

I find this description marvellous and perfect. Indeed, serendipitous moments, at least as we understand them nowadays, lead to discoveries that take place when more than one "heroes" are physically present, such discoveries are accidental events but, still, the "heroes" need to be sagacious enough. In short, you need smart people in the same place discussing anything that comes to mind.

Michael Arena and Dr. Gleb Tsipursky propose two different ways to tackle the problem of reduced physical co-location of employees. Michael Arena believes in what he calls Designed Serendipity, i.e. creating and fostering an environment by facilitating meaningful moments within organizations by purposefully designing the physical workspace, by forming cross-disiplinary teams, by forging new connections and by creating cross-functional team meetings in virtual spaces for virtual serendipitous moments.

Dr. Gleb Tsipursky , on the other hand, proposes an active integration of AI in all brainstorming processes to augment the human ingenuity and largely replace serendipity by the creative prowess of Generative AI. Such integration can be in all steps of the innovation generation process: From the initial idea generation, to the refinement of the idea, to the development and visualization of the inventive concept, to the collaborative integration and up to the continuous improvement stage.

The big difference between the two approaches is that Michael Arena still believes in serendipity and considers at least some physical interaction (aka "office time") as a necessary part of long-term innovation whereas Dr. Gleb Tsipursky believes that proper integration of AI can bring benefits that outperform the traditional benefits of serendipity, thus office is no longer a necessity.

There is, however, research by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) from what they claim to be "a first-of-its-kind experiment", that suggests that although Generative AI can improve performance for creative ideation, there is a big risk to creativity: A collective creativity loss. This is because the diversity of ideas among active users of Generative AI is lower compared to the diversity of ideas of those who do not use the technology. In Horace Walpole terms, we could say that the discoveries of things the heroes are not in quest for are simply not happening.

Furthermore, there is a longer term risk for those who use AI systematically, it may strife their creative abilities over time. Again in Walpole terms we could say that the heroes become less sagacious.

These findings may have fueled the return-to-office mandates of some organizations. Indeed, for Amazon Web Services (AWS) head, Adam Selipsky , serendipity was the basic argument for the RTO mandate. Similar stories surface from time to time and for various organizations.

But despite the RTO mandates, the data from the Flex Index report has shown that WFH and office occupancy in 2023 was largely flat. Employees are happy with their hybrid or remote policies (actuall they would prefer half a day more, but we'll leave this pint for another article) and are not complying with any RTO mandates, at least not on average.

So how can we reconsile the need for an office-less (or less-office) workplace with the established belief that serendipity is linked to long term innovation?

At Coremoting , we propose a new concept: integrating the "home" in the distributed collaborative workspace. Employees working from home no longer need to be physically away from their colleagues. Those with enough space and feelings of loneliness can become welcoming hosts and spend work days and serendipitous moments with their guest colleagues, fostering new connections and creating new layers of collaboration, based on personal criteria, common interests or affiliations.

For example, colleagues of large fully-remote or hybrid organizations living in the same area or suburb but who had no knowledge of each other, can now meet and work together at one's place, saving on commute costs for the guest, removing loneliness for both.

Another case, single parents may co-work together with their kids playing in the background or sharing a nanny, thus supporting each other and saving on costs, while serendipity takes its course.

A further example, newly hired employees may hop from one host to another and gain horizontal mentoring, experience and connections that would otherwise require longer and lonelier processes with doubtful results.

Coremoting can be integrated in any medium or large organization. Fully remote organizations can create new layers of physical interaction and serendipitous moments between their WFH employees. Hybrid organizations can increase the serendipitous moments and become more inclusive for those who prefer or are forced to work from home due to their personal situation and can also act as "buffer" for the peak days where office is in great demand but office space may not suffice. And for full in-office organizations, it can become a welcome alternative for collaboration, allowing for flexibility without losing on the collaborative and serendipitous nature of physical co-location.

Flexibility, Serendipity and Generative AI are three aspects of the modern workplace that need acknowledgment, fostering, integration and diffusion in any organization. By properly leveraging all three of them, organizations can thrive and remain competitive and innovative, outperforming their rivals and becoming the "heroes" of not just Serendip, but of the entire world.