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What Is Creative? - Part 4

Before leaving the subject of discovery, we should probably take a look at two closely related factors, chance and serendipity.

Too many people are apt to write off the effects of "chance" on the development of an idea as just "good luck." They over­look the fact that the only people such "luck" seems to happen to with any regularity are those who have been searching for just such a break. For example, Charles Goodyear, mentioned earlier, had spent five years and every cent he could lay his hands on, even to the neglect of his family, experimenting with the crude rubber then available, trying to make it into a permanent substance. Without the benefit of the work and study he had put into the material before that stroke of "luck," it is doubtful that he would even have recognized the discovery of the new substance which resulted from the accidental burning on the stove. It is simply the old story that the best-coached team gets the breaks.

Serendipity is quite another matter. This is, basically, the discovery of one thing while you are looking for something else. For example, in attempting to perfect a new type of carbon copying paper, researchers of the National Cash Register Company developed a method of encapsulating microscopic droplets of ink in a gelatin solution. They suddenly discovered that their microscopic encapsulating process had literally thou­sands of other possibilities in fields quite far from typewriters and business machines. In fact, there is every possibility that some of the other uses—in photography, medicine, electronics, and even cosmetics—may prove to be more profitable than the original carbon-paper business.

Probably the chief distinction between "chance" and serendip­ity is that the "serendipist" is usually looking for "something." He may not be sure just what that "something" is, therefore he is alert to almost anything that comes along. In fact, he may even be hyper sensitized to the appearance of anything new or different. Therefore, while his discovery may also appear to be "luck," in the sense that this wasn't what he was really searching for, it is not so much luck when you consider that he was really searching for anything new. As the Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, said, "You will never find the unexpected unless you are looking for it."

Related terms include small business management an entrepreneurial emphasis and business change.