Many corporate processes are designed to minimise variation. This is crucial in manufacturing (all the pieces need to fit together correctly) and toxic in a knowledge economy (we don't innovate by doing the exact same thing as yesterday).
We need a way to emphasise positive variation (#serendipity) while de-emphasising negative variation (loss of quality, not fit-for-purpose), which is where concepts like Serendipity Engineering come into play
ideas.riverglide.com/serendipity-en…
ideas.riverglide.com/serendipity-en…
Serendipity is a fundamental component of evolutionary and emergent systems. In both genetics and memetics, a simple, small, improvement (which may have been introduced by accident) can lead to a replicator becoming the dominant player in an ecosystem.
These improvements are rarely planned or designed, and it's only in retrospect that we can see how they tipped the balance. It's important that our processes allow these variations to flourish or die out on their own, without prematurely ending them before they have an effect.
