In the popular imagination, serendipity is often associated with an "eureka" moment: a sudden, flashy spark of insight that strikes a lone genius. We tell stories of petri dish accidents that led to the discovery of penicillin, and "glues that didn't glue" that led to 3M Post-its, as if they were lightning strikes from a clear blue sky. But this narrative dismisses the interaction, agency, and time that goes into making serendipitous discoveries.

In a recent paper published in Strategic Organization, we challenge this somewhat romanticized view. Rather than treating serendipity as a magical accident, we conceptualize it as a social, effortful process that involves multiple people from within and across an organization over extended periods of time. To unpack serendipity from this perspective, we conducted an in-depth qualitative study of a pharmaceutical company (PharmaCo) and their participation in an international research consortium over five years.

What we found might surprise but also comfort you: the practices leading to breakthrough discoveries are remarkably mundane and ordinary.

Serendipity as "work", not magic

One of the most striking findings from our analysis is that serendipitous discoveries don't emerge from lightning-bolt moments but from the grinding, unglamorous work of everyday organizational life. There is an inherent paradox at play: the extraordinary emerges from the seemingly unremarkable routines of daily work.

This "serendipity work" consists of four mundane practice bundles that involve different people over time:

• Deep-diving isn't mystical contemplation, it's the simple act of immersing oneself in a new field to solve a routine task. For instance, a PharmaCo employee had to deep-dive into regulatory documents simply because his colleague left the company and someone had to do the paperwork. This boring necessity later proved crucial.

• Listening in is the practice of developing "ambient awareness": attending meetings or sitting in forums without a specific focus, simply to pick up cues from the periphery. It's as mundane as overhearing a colleague in an open office or attending a steering committee meeting on work you're not directly involved in.

• Connecting involves the everyday mental work of linking "unfiltered" information to your existing knowledge. It's about recognizing a matching pair between a random observation and a strategic need—seeing dots that others might miss.

Implementing is the "grind" of innovation. It involves allocating resources, hiring people, or deviating from a project plan to chase a hunch. Without this work, even the most brilliant insight dies on the vine.

The lead-up to serendipity: rethinking the "trigger"

While previous process models of serendipity start with a triggering event—the "aha" moment—our paper reveals the critical importance of "pre-work" that happens before the spark. These invisible, mundane activities—like deep immersion in a boring task or casually listening to a presentation you aren't directly involved in—lay the foundation for a discovery to even be possible.

For example, the discovery of the strategic value of Patient Reported Outcome (PRO) data at PharmaCo didn't start with a scientific breakthrough. It started with a simple logistical problem: regulators wouldn't answer a survey. To solve this, employees had to organize a meeting, which led to "listening in" on regulator interests, which eventually evolved into an important strategic shift for the company's participation in the consortium and actions toward value creation beyond the project's original scope.

The breakthrough wasn't planned, but it wasn't purely accidental either. It emerged from the accumulation of ordinary work practices that created the conditions for discovery.

Strategic lessons

Organizations can enable serendipity by supporting these bundles of mundane practices. It isn't about planning for the unexpected, but about creating an environment where:

• Routine work is valued as a source of deep expertise. When employees dive deep into seemingly boring tasks, they build knowledge foundations that later enable connections others can't see.

• Peripheral presence is encouraged. Allowing employees to "listen in" on topics outside their immediate domain creates the ambient awareness from which unexpected insights emerge.

• Flexibility exists to pivot resources toward "hunches." When employees connect disparate pieces of information, organizations need mechanisms to test and implement these insights rather than dismissing them as distractions.

The bottom line: If you want to find the extraordinary, look closer at your most boring, everyday tasks. That's where the seeds of discovery are usually brewing.

Methodological reflections: studying serendipity in real time

Whereas many studies of serendipity quite naturally rely on retrospective accounts or archival material, we were able to study serendipity as it unfolded in real time over five years. To be fair, serendipity wasn't the initial focus of our study but emerged—serendipitously—from our observations.

However, studying serendipity in real time wasn't easy. Data collection was messy and inherently broad, inductive, and open-ended. We didn't know what would eventually lead to serendipitous discoveries. Practically, we attended meetings and conducted regular follow-up interviews with people involved in the consortium. Since the consortium was EU-funded, objectives and milestones were defined ex-ante, and deviations were difficult to make. Attending consortium-related meetings allowed us to study progress on planned tasks as well as anything that emerged unexpectedly beyond the pre-defined tasks, and whether or not they were acted upon.

While our initial interviews focused on understanding participants’ roles in the project and company, interviews in later rounds focused on the unexpected turns and insights that emerged from consortium work and how they were acted upon.

As we progressed, we validated our insights with our informants, which was itself revealing. Sometimes they didn't share our interpretation of something as serendipitous, feeling slightly offended and arguing that it was "part of the plan all along!" These instances were important for us as researchers to sharpen our definitions and coding, but also provided reflections on the inter-subjectivity of what counts as serendipitous. Having the grant agreements and contracts was helpful here, as we could go back in time to see what was indeed part of the project scope and what emerged along the way.

We learned that a useful way to detect serendipitous discoveries is to start by focusing on any instance of discovery. By checking if identified discoveries are directly related to planned objectives, researchers are also able to detect discoveries that fall outside planned work. Those identified discoveries can then be followed in real time. There is no certainty of hitting jackpot; studying serendipity in real time also leads to dead ends. This is the inevitable condition of being an inductive researcher. In our case we identified four potential serendipitous discoveries. Two of them did not lead to maturation, while the remaining two did.

Why this matters

Our research reveals that serendipity is neither pure accident nor carefully planned strategy—it's the result of ordinary work practices that create conditions for discovery:

• Serendipity requires "pre-work" in the form of deep-diving, listening in, connecting, and implementing.undane practices that lay the foundation for breakthrough insights.

• The extraordinary emerges from the ordinary. Breakthrough discoveries often start with routine tasks like attending meetings, doing paperwork, or solving logistical problems.

• Insights are vulnerable without implementation. Even brilliant discoveries can evaporate if organizations don't allocate resources and legitimacy to pursue them.

• Organizations can cultivate serendipity by valuing routine expertise, encouraging peripheral participation, and maintaining flexibility to pivot toward emerging opportunities.

• Studying serendipity in real time reveals processes that retrospective accounts miss, particularly the mundane work that precedes "aha" moments.

• What counts as serendipitous is subjective. Participants may retroactively rationalize discoveries as planned, highlighting the importance of longitudinal data and contractual documentation.

About the research

We conducted a five-year longitudinal ethnographic study of a pharmaceutical company's participation in an EU-funded international research consortium. Using real-time observations of meetings, longitudinal interviews with consortium participants, and analysis of grant agreements and contracts, we traced how serendipitous discoveries emerged from mundane work practices. Our inductive analysis revealed four practice bundles (deep-diving, listening in, connecting, and implementing) that constitute "serendipity work," challenging traditional views of serendipity as sudden, individual, and accidental.

Author bio

Susan Hilbolling is a Associate Professor at the Department of Management, Aarhus School of Business and Social Sciences, Aarhus University. Her research interests include the dynamics of collaborative multiparty (digital) innovation, platform ecosystems, strategy-as-practice, AI at work, qualitative methods and process research.

Pernille Smith is a Associate Professor at the Department of Management, Aarhus School of Business and Social Sciences, Aarhus University. Her research interest include knowledge exchange dynamics in interdisciplinary innovation settings, including digital transformation, public-private research consortia, corporate-startup collaborations, as well as knowledge integration in mergers & acquisitions.