Managing Serendipity

Author: Lukas Kubina

The book "The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things In Motion", celebrates unconventional networkers such as Yossi Vardi, the 68-year-old "grandfather" of Israeli venture capital. The DLD Co-chair attends or hosts some 40 pow-wows a year, including Burning Man. According to "The Power of Pull", Yossi Vardi is a "super-node", one of the best-connected people in the high-tech industry. More than that, he is a role model: he excels in "managing serendipity". By mingling with so many strangers, he finds that he often bumps into people who give him valuable information.

The authors' core argument is that today's technology, especially the internet, is undermining the old command and control top-down approach to business, which the authors call "push", by giving individuals more power to shape their working lives. There are huge opportunities available to people who can figure out how to use the "power of pull", a term the authors define as "the ability to draw out people and resources as needed to address opportunities and challenges." To fully benefit of the pulling resources the authors offer three tips. One suggestion is to join Yossi Vardi on the conference trail. When industries go through periods of rapid innovation, there is typically a flowering of new conferences to help people share knowledge in corridor conversations. To maximise serendipity, Yossi Vardi cleverly mixes specialised conferences with the more eclectic kind.
Read a review on "The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things In Motion" here and watch the super-node Yossi moderating the "Disruptive" panel with Mitchell Baker (Mozilla), Niklas Zennström (Atomico), and Jimmy Wales at DLD2010 below.

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