Systemic Serendipity

By Melissa Waggener Zorkin*

Is there a more oxymoronic idea than “creating” serendipitous moments? After all the premise of serendipity is a belief in having desirable discoveries and outcomes happen by good fortune, luck or accident.

But as I ready myself to attend the World Economic Forum’s India Economic Summit, I am reminded of a call to action by Jeff Raikes at a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Health Summit I attended recently where he spoke (and I’m admittedly paraphrasing a bit) of the need for creating systemic serendipity.  It’s not enough to “hope” connections are made between groups and individuals that can solve issues — we must foster an environment where they can occur.

The reason why is related to one that I’ve touched on previously, around the importance of gatherings like this one in Mumbai. There are connections, context and understanding that, even in our hyperconnected world of today, can happen only via direct interaction and listening.

By gathering individuals from virtually every facet of the global community who have a contribution to make in realizing the opportunity, and helping solve the challenges India faces, the India Economic Summit can serve as a forum to help attendees dissect the problems and opportunities into smaller focused pieces so that they can be tackled through specialized areas of expertise and particular passion or insight of individual organizations.

Of course there are dissenting views that consider the challenges too great, the opportunities perhaps unrealizable, and take a more jaded view on these gatherings. It’s understandable, and those perspectives should serve as a motivating challenge to attendees to find the unifying approach where they can collaborate. Ideas that need help getting to the hands of those who can benefit from them most — and working toward solving for those opportunities. By doing this, you achieve real and enduring impact, and you achieve a level of scalability that is much harder, if not impossible, to realize when you are separated by time, distance and culture.

So in each conversation I will have at the India Economic Summit I will aim to accomplish three things:

• First, make those connections with individuals of like-mindedness. For me, this is about empowering girls and women while making sure men and boys are part of this solution, not just looked upon as part of the problem.
• Second, look at everything through the lens of innovation so that I can consider how the transformative power of communications can help make the innovation useful and impactful for the people who need it most.
• And third, define the opportunities and problems to locate common ground with each person I meet.

There are going to be thousands of amazing stories of inspiration to share at this meeting. But inspiration in itself is not enough. The inspiration must result in an impact through action, dialogue and realization of opportunity and reconciliation of challenges. This is why I’m looking forward to systematizing serendipity that can lead to connections which will help shape the future of India.

Melissa Waggener Zorkin* is attending the India Economic Summit and is Chief Executive Officer, President and Founder Waggener Edstrom Worldwide