By Joe McKendrick,Senior Contributor

Copyright forbes

Informal, chance encounters lead to the best ideas

Is digital work too predictable? With AI-driven processes and remote connected teams, it may be possible that employees and decision-makers are falling into an electronic trap. No matter how many parameters it has, genAI cannot pull innovation out of the air, despite its ability to provide snappy answers and suggestions for business problems.

Serendipity, or chance encounters that foster innovation, is the key to an innovative culture – which is “highly dependent on increasing serendipitous occurrences at work,” according to Matthew Grimes, professor at Cambridge University, who in 2023 published a study on the link between serendipity and innovation.

”Innovation often depends on proximity,” agreed Jason Gesing, founder and chairman of Omnus Law. “When people stop bumping into each other, you lose that creative momentum. The hallway moments disappear.”

Working environment really matters in increasing serendipity, Grimes concluded. Two highly tech-driven companies, Pixar and Google, organized their headquarters to maximize cross-pollination of data and people. Grimes described how Pixar encourages serendipity by design:

“The main buildings of Pixar were designed to maximize inadvertent encounters. Instead of designing separate buildings for computer scientists, executives, and animators, the company developed a single big space with a big atrium as well as mailboxes, meetings rooms, and a coffeeshop at the center. This led to people bumping into each other in the atrium. Other such techniques to pair people up to create these ’watercooler moments’ have been implemented, such as randomized coffee trials or learning lunches.”

Can technology-focused, highly dispersed workplaces replicate such serendipity? Many industry leaders think it’s doable, but with caveats. “I think we have a healthy amount of serendipity around tactical parts of the business, with a lot of work happening over Slack and detail-oriented messaging platforms,” said Rob Skillington, CTO and co-founder at Chronosphere.

Synchronous chat over channels such as Slack “can replace a lot of that bumping into each other,” he continued. Still, he added, “we don’t get the same attention with more strategic conversations. What’s missing when we are all virtual is building those deeper relationships or personal connections you get when you have physical connections. I think virtual does lead to a lower level of trust and directness in communication.”

At Omnus Law, a tech-savvy law firm based in Utah, a metaverse-type solution helps fulfill some opportunities for serendipity, which called the “OmnusVerse.” This online environment “recreates that sense of casual presence so conversations happen before they’re scheduled, and collaboration becomes part of the environment,” said Gesing. “These moments don’t happen by chance. They happen by design.”

The idea that in-person collaboration “is somehow more creative is outdated,” said Sarah Schmidt, president of Interdependence Public Relations. “Innovation doesn’t need a watercooler – it needs intention.”

At Interdependence, “we know some of our best ideas are born in a brainstorming Google Doc, a TikTok DM that sparks a campaign, or a Teams thread where someone throws out a half-baked thought that turns into a headline,” Schmidt pointed out.

“Virtual teams aren’t less creative,” she added. “They’re just unbound by geography, hierarchy and the illusion that innovation only happens between 9 and 5. In fact, remote work has forced us to be more deliberate, more inclusive and more open to unexpected inputs.”

The bottom line is “creativity doesn’t vanish when you take away the office, it multiplies when you build a culture that knows how to catch it wherever it shows up,” Schmidt said.

Ultimately, a hybrid approach may deliver the best results. “To brainstorm and agree on what to innovate or create, it’s better in person,” Skillington recounted. “But to then do the actual innovative work, such as coding, most engineers are more productive in virtual settings. I’ve heard people come away from product and engineering offsites saying we were more productive in two days than what would have been months in virtual settings.”

A sense of “safety” is also important to serendipities collaboration – a sense that people can speak freely without judgment, just as they could, in most cases, in a lunchroom encounter versus a stiff executive meeting.

“Creating safe spaces and smaller group discussions goes a long way to encourage innovation and creativity,” said Skillington. “Specifically, what I have found works well is breaking into small groups with creative exercises. For example, we recently did this impact design studio, where we walked through a problem, a workflow, and some background, and then we looked at inspiration on how others have solved a similar problem. Then, we broke into several small groups, with each group creating sketches and virtual whiteboards of potential solutions. Each group then came back to the larger group and presented their ideas, sketches and process flows. We then discussed the different ideas and further brainstormed potential solutions. It was very powerful.”

“Innovation thrives in psychological safety, not perfection,” said Schmidt. “We normalize play. We ask our leaders to host digital walk-and-talks. We invite wild, half-baked ideas into shared whiteboards. We value raw creative energy over polished presentation decks. Because when people feel safe to experiment without fear of failure that’s when the breakthroughs happen.”

Innovation is more likely “when people feel safe to think out loud and when they collide with ideas that weren’t part of their agenda,” said Gesing. “That gets harder when you replace organic moments with rigid meetings.”

Such informal collaboration “has been a game-changer,” said Schmidt. “It flattens hierarchies. It gives introverts a louder voice. It gives ideas space to breathe. Whether it’s a shared brainstorm doc, a Teams thread, or a voice note, ideas don’t need a boardroom to be brilliant. Innovation isn’t accidental. It’s cultural.”

The OmnusVerse is designed as a space “where people can connect freely and move between conversations like they would in a physical workspace,” he explained. “Innovation rarely shows up on a schedule, so the environment needs to support unstructured interaction.”

In this online environment, “we’ve built shared spaces that allow those moments to happen naturally,” said Gesing. “When someone feels safe enough to say, ‘This might be a bad idea, but…,’ you’ve done something right.”

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