Abstract
Serendipity is a fortuitous accident; the exploitation of luck by a prepared mind. It is a framework for understanding how luck becomes actualized through human activity. It is widely studied across domains as varied as philosophy, information studies, and innovation research and is most often cast as having a role in the uncovering or generation of new ideas by provoking insight through unintended and unplanned bisociation. Serendipity has been credited as a key component of various inventions, creative inspiration, or unlikely yet fortunate happenings with varying degrees of engagement with its relational ontology. It is thus an integral part of any understanding of the possible because it provides a bridge from the possible to the actual. This entry will define the key types of serendipity and the models which can be used to understand it before examining the evidence suggesting there are differences in personality and environments that may be more facilitative of serendipitous occurrences.
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Notes
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For a summary of the most cited story from The Three Princes of Serendip, see Van Andel (1994, p. 632).
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Ross, W. (2020). Serendipity. In: The Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Possible. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98390-5_47-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98390-5_47-1
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