SERENDIPITY

How do accidents become discoveries? Out research investigates serendipity—those moments when chance encounters yield creative breakthroughs. Moving beyond notions of pure luck, we explore serendipity as requiring both accident and sagacity: the fortuitous event and the skill to recognize and exploit it. We examine how serendipitous moments emerge from the interaction between people and their material environments, tracing the cognitive and emotional processes—from surprise to curiosity—that transform unexpected events into creative insight. Our work reveals serendipity as a distributed phenomenon, shaped by individual dispositions, environmental affordances, and the dynamic interplay between planned intentions and unanticipated disruptions.