“In an invention, what is essential is chance; the bad thing is that few people come across it ”. This is what Friedrich Nietzsche used to say, and indeed technical and scientific progress has taken great strides by chance.
More exactly, the happy coincidence of a chance and someone who identified it and intuited valuable applications. This is what happened with the appearance of penicillin, X-rays, Velcro, Teflon, the microwave oven, matches, celluloid and a host of innovations.
Let's get the most out of coincidences.
With this song to chance I will not invite, of course, to inhibit faculties and efforts while waiting for a favorable combination of circumstances…; but I do join those who preach greater attention to the unexpected or unforeseen, while carrying out searches, studies, investigations. Various thinkers have warned us that we must take better advantage of it:
• "In the field of observation, chance only favors the prepared mind" (Louis Pasteur).
• "Chance is one of the names of providence" (Nicolas de Chamfort).
• “The essential thing in an invention is chance; the bad thing is that few people come across it ”(Friedrich Nietzsche).
• "Chance is always there: have the hook ready" (Publio Ovidio Nasón).
• “Providence happens to us; for its purposes man has to mold it ”(Friedrich von Schiller).
• “Of all the benefactors, chance is the one that has had the most ungrateful ones” (Baron de Stassart).
Al relacionarla con la innovación en las empresas hablamos de “serendipidad” (diccionario de Manuel Seco), que viene a ser la facultad de los individuos que, receptivos a la casualidad, hacen de la misma inferencias valiosas, deducciones que contribuyen a la ampliación de los campos del saber y a la innovación. Con este término (también decimos “serendipìa”), nos referimos no sólo a la catálisis de la casualidad, sino también a la intuición, la sagacidad, la perspicacia que conduce a aplicaciones valiosas.
The word comes from the English serendipity, a term coined in 1754 by the fourth Earl of Oxford, Horace Walpole, after reading an old Persian tale, The Three Princes of Serendip (now Sri Lanka), in which the protagonists made shrewd inferences. The current meaning of the term may not be entirely consistent with Walpole's original intention, but today it points especially to a conjunction of chance and sagacity, with its precise dose of intuition.
It is often difficult to separate discoveries recognized as serendipitous (in English, serendipitous), from discoveries and innovations of a purely intuitive nature: such is the case of revelations through dreams (the structure of the benzene molecule, the sewing machine of Howe…). Sometimes we can consider that intuition appears by chance, and other times that chance triggers our intuition…; so the link highlighted by different experts is not surprising.
It is worth remembering that, like other scientists, Albert Einstein adopted intuition as a working tool, and that some of his discoveries present a good dose of serendipity. Among his statements in this regard are: "Intuition is the only thing that is really valuable", "I trust intuition and inspiration", "Sometimes I feel that I am right even though I do not know the reason", "Science, as an end that must be persecuted, it is something so subjective and psychologically conditioned by the circumstances… ”.
But let's remember a curious case, which may be more familiar to all of us. Indeed, chance sometimes materializes in a singularly curious way: for example, by confusing, by its pronunciation, test and taste. A confusion that could also have occurred in Spanish, if you have some powder in front of you and they tell you to try them…
Leslie Hough was, in 1976, chlorinating sugar in search of an effective insecticide. After certain proportions in the mixture of a sugar solution with sulfuryl chloride (highly toxic), Hough asked his assistant, a student in practice, to test it (test). The daring student put a swatch on his tongue and declared that it was extremely sweet. Apparently, Hough was horrified by the accident and, not least, surprised by the result: a compound 600 times sweeter than sugar. About 20 years later, after numerous tests to detect possible harmful effects, it began to be distributed as a calorie-free sweetener under the brand name Splenda.
Apparently, some other sweeteners also arose by chance, always counting on someone who trusted in the possibilities of the corresponding substance; This was the case with its own, better known, saccharin in 1879, obtained by Constantine Fahlberg. In short, I wanted to bring you this message: let's take advantage of the coincidences, in case they have a valuable application hidden.
