London, 29 September: Serendipity Takes Centre Stage Twice in One Evening
Sometimes you can feel the Zeitgeist shifting. The fact that two talks on serendipity are happening in London, just hours apart, tells us something important. This feels like the moment when we can start thinking more creatively - and more rigorously - about how serendipity really works.
On Monday 29 September, London will see two talks on the same theme - within just a few hours and barely a mile of each other. At 4pm, I’ll be speaking at King’s College London on Serendipity: It Doesn’t Happen by Accident. https://www.kcl.ac.uk/events/serendipity-it-doesnt-happen-by-accident. At 7pm, Martin Reeves will be at the Royal Institution, exploring the “messier” reality of innovation. https://www.rigb.org/whats-on/science-serendipity-how-innovation-really-works
That’s more than coincidence. It points to a wider Zeitgeist. Across science, business, and policy, people are beginning to realise that innovation cannot be reduced to neat stories of heroic individuals. Instead, it emerges from connections, surprising encounters, and unforeseen outcomes. What looks like luck is really the product of networks and environments - what I describe as the rules of three: three links and three factors that shape how serendipity actually operates.
It’s no accident that Martin’s recent book, Like: The Button That Changed the World, also grapples with serendipity - in his case, how a single design choice in social media reshaped the way we connect, discover, and share. His talk will bring that story alive. My book tries to step back and offer the broader framework: how serendipity works, how it can be explained through networks, and how we can design for it across science, business, and policy.
That’s why I wrote Serendipity: It Doesn’t Happen by Accident. Not just to challenge the myths of invention, but to frame the discussion and set out a basis for further research. We need to move beyond anecdotes and metaphors, and start studying serendipity systematically - to model its dynamics and embed it in how we innovate, govern, and respond to global challenges.
The fact that two talks on the same day, in the same city, are converging on this theme suggests that the moment is here. The only question is: will we just talk about serendipity, or will we act on it?