There is something special about meetings in the flesh, which cannot be replicated digitally

I wrote a little while back about Serendipity and Randomised Coffee Trials and since then I seem to keep coming across articles on the role and importance of serendipity in organizations. Here are a few quotes from two recent articles.

• Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings.
  
  
• We get a particular intellectual charge from sharing ideas in person.
  
  
• If you just think of serendipity as an interaction with an unintended outcome, you can orchestrate pleasant surprises.

Credit: Engineering Serendipit

• Silicon Valley's greatest advances came through collaboration -- making serendipitous encounters critical.
  
  
• There is something special ... about meetings in the flesh, which cannot be replicated digitally.
  
  
• When Steve Jobs designed a new headquarters for Pixar, he obsessed over ways to structure the atrium, and even where to locate the bathrooms, so that serendipitous personal encounters would occur.

Credit: Why Steve Jobs Obsessed About Office Design (And, Yes, Bathroom Locations)

Serendipity has always been a big part of what my Knowledge Cafes have been all about. You can never predict the outcomes of a conversation. Conversations have a life of their own - you have little control over them. They take you where they want to take you - sometimes down blind alleys but more often than not to fascinating places you would have never have visited on your own.