Most discoveries in business are the result of accident, rather than design

'Mould-breaking strategies grow initially like weeds; they are not cultivated like tomatoes in a hothouse.'
Henry Mintzberg.

'A weed is a flower in the wrong place.'
Ian Emberson.

Get out of your office. Tell me, honestly, when was the last time that something inspiring, off-the-wall, counter-cultural or clever happened at that big table in your office?' Tom Peters, the exuberant writer on management, poses this arresting question as a prelude to reappraising the conditions that are conducive to creativity, breakthrough thinking and strategic innovation.

Peters has long held the view that luck is a critical contributor to corporate success but, more contentiously, that luck can be ‘managed’ to some extent.

If you believe that success owes a lot to luck, and that luck in turn owes a lot to getting in the way of unexpected opportunities, you need not despair – there are strategies you can pursue to allow a little nuttiness into your life and, perhaps, get lucky. What, then, are some of the ways of bumping into unexpected opportunities?

Peter Drucker believed that noticing the unexpected is the richest, least risky and most neglected source of innovation in business – far more so, for example, than the application of emerging scientific knowledge. Our expectations are the practical manifestation of our theories. So when the world takes us by surprise it is, in effect, challenging us to interrogate the belief that led to this false prediction.

The more we attend to the unexpected and the more seriously we enquire into its source, the more we will spot opportunities to change our beliefs and try something new or different.

Placing ourselves purposefully in the way of unexpected opportunities can be seen as a way to deliberately cross boundaries. When we move into unfamiliar space, we heighten not only our sensitivity to the unexpected but also our chance of encountering something new and thought-provoking.

Companies are replete with boundaries that act as potential barriers to innovation – internal distinctions between departments, functions, levels and disciplines, as well as external distinctions between one business and another. Moving only among those who share similar perspectives sets a low ceiling on learning. It is when we escape into ‘foreign territory’ that learning, imagination and innovation are revitalised.

Ad agencies that mix their core disciplines typically outperform those that keep them hermetically sealed. Typically, there are far more  organisational restraints encouraging people to stay within their unit than there are mechanisms encouraging cross-boundary mixing. This is particularly true of the service and support functions in a business, such as finance, engineering, human resources and information technology. Peters once remarked that 'the really interesting stuff is usually going on just beyond the margins of the professional’s ever-narrowing line of sight'.

There are four frontiers that, when crossed, stimulate the imagination – organisational, geographical, methodological and conceptual.

Within an organisation, the simple act of mixing people from different levels, functions and departments has the effect of generating richer conversations and opening up new perspectives. Management development programmes are much more productive when, for example, participants escape the physical and intellectual confines of the lecture theatre and find themselves engaging in open conversation with people from their own.

Executives have far more to learn from artists, philosophers, athletes, composers, volunteers, journalists, soldiers and explorers than from other executives, however successful and however eminent they are. The enlightened trend in business schools towards ‘discovery programmes’ and ‘learning journeys’ recognises the power of this kind of ‘accidental encounter’.

The learning agendas of most companies are remarkably alike. For example, the brief that a company gives to a business school for the development of a training programme is much the same, whatever the company and whatever its industry. Topics will concentrate on leadership, strategic innovation and change management, and the tools will be a combination of lectures, case studies and 360° feedback. This covers probably 95 per cent of the work that business schools do for their corporate clients. These paths are far too well trodden for any fresh insights to emerge.

By contrast, the skill to ask different questions, address a different agenda or to pose different challenges is rare, but urgent. Even the smallest shift in the definition of a problem – or an opportunity – can open up new options. Yet invariably companies are too busy seeking out solutions to pose unasked questions.

'Two roads diverged in a wood, and… I took the one less travelled by. And that has made all the difference.'
Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

This edited extract from Uncommon Sense, Common Nonsense, by Jules Goddard and Tony Eccles was taken from the September issue of Market Leader. Browse the archive here.