Leveraging Serendipity: Give People Space and Time to Explore Their Intrinsic Motivations

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Intrinsic motivation drives unstoppable and amazing performance, leading to flow states and valuable outcomes. Extrinsic motivation, such as promotion-based incentives, can hinder value creation. The approach of encouraging and fanning the flames of individuals already intrinsically motivated in the desired direction yields better results. This method, however, may appear as luck when successful. Despite this, the deliberate fostering of serendipity increases the likelihood of fortunate outcomes.

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Why do organizations get slower as they grow? What can organizations learn from slime molds? What are the advantages of top-down organization versus bottom-up organization, and vice versa? How can organizations encourage serendipity? What use are doorbells in jungles? Why is it so hard for organizations to set a "north star" that is at once plausible, coherent, and good?

Alex Komoroske has over a decade of experience in the tech industry as a product manager focusing on platform- and ecosystem-shaped problems. While at Google, he worked on Chrome's Web Platform PM team, Augmented Reality in Google Maps, and Ambient Computing. He's fascinated by how to navigate the emergent complexity within organizations to achieve great results. You can find some of his public writing at komoroske.com.

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