It was under one month ago when I thought of writing a scholarly article on the very fascinating phenomenon, serendipity. This is one of my favourite words -so concurred a fellow writer cum journo, she said I should write a teaser on the article first to see if it could be published. Thus began my newly found passion, and now an intense affair with, Serendipity.
Happy accidents, or finding something seemingly useful when one is searching for something entirely unrelated -are some of the meanings we understand. The internet, the largest and free of cost libarary is full of definitions and discussions on this wonderful topic. Christopher Columbus setting out to find India, ended up on the other side of the world, having discovered Americas. This is the commonest example, known to all of us.
A management research institute, through a bit of serendipitous encounter, agreed thanks to their dynamic director, to have me speak for two hours on a simplified version of my essay. Standing ovation resulted from 200+ MBA aspirants, and a goodish amount of queries followed, not only related to serendipity but even to the creative innovations, patenting processes and IPR etc. Soon, a product design institute asked me over to repeat an abridged version of the talk... as a part of a 5-seminar marathon session of topics that were handpicked from my bag of tricks i.e. advanced materials e.g. advanced ceramics, machineable ceramics, plasma processing, special steels, biomimetics (another blog necessary for that world...) and serendipity.
Yet another liberal arts institute wants me to do the same, but after a few months.
The product design team I referred to earlier, is finalizing a 15 day course on the topic -and it may so happen that I would expand the topic from serendipity to its sistely avatars i.e. synchronicity, intuition, and much more... coursing along a little too close to the ESP areas : however the mysteries of the human mind fascinate me no end. This seems like a wonderful beginning to more focused work on dragging the various gray areas between psychology and parapsychology with science as the locus standii, so that a very wide group of intellectually stimulated persons could pitch right in.
Perhaps a book could result.
More later.
Cheerz!
8th Feb 2011
As usual you are too good in the field you like and reach a pick in chosen subject
ReplyDeleteAnother treasure, another book, inside your head, waiting to be born
ReplyDeleteThanks Gautam, and dear Audrey.
ReplyDeleteYes a book has been brewing in my head.
Fortunately from tomorrow I am beginning a 15 day course on Serendipity for product design students. I'm sure, interaction with bright younsters will feed me a lot of new ideas hence the book idea will get consolidated further...
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