The Anatomy of the Unsought Finding: Pek van Andel’s Rulebook for Luck

If Horace Walpole gave us the word serendipity in 1754, it was Pek van Andel who gave us the manual in 1994.

In his landmark paper published in 1994 in The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, van Andel moved serendipity out of the realm of magic and into the realm of method. He famously defined it as “the art of making an unsought finding.”

But his most important contribution to the Serendipity Rules philosophy is something even more practical: the concept of the successful error.

The Anatomy of a Breakthrough

Van Andel argues that serendipity is not a single moment. It is a pattern.

After studying hundreds of scientific and technological breakthroughs, he found that they almost always follow the same structure:

• The Quest
  You are looking for A. A stronger glue. A cure for a specific disease.
• The Surprise
  You encounter B. A weak adhesive. An unexpected reaction. Something that does not fit the plan.
• The Choice
  You do not discard B as a mistake. You apply sagacity and ask whether it might solve a problem you were not yet aware of.

Serendipity lives in that third step.

The Successful Error

Van Andel’s favorite example is the Post-it Note.

At 3M, scientist Spencer Silver was trying to create an extremely strong adhesive. Instead, he produced one that barely stuck at all.

In a rigid system, this is a failure.

In van Andel’s system, it is a signal.

Because Silver, and later Art Fry, practiced the art of the unsought finding, they recognized that the failed glue was perfectly suited to a problem no one had formally defined yet: a bookmark that stayed in place and left no residue.

The error was not the weakness of the glue.
The error would have been ignoring it.

Can You Program Serendipity?

One of the most provocative aspects of van Andel’s work is his idea of programmability.

You cannot predict when a happy accident will occur.
But you can design conditions that make one more likely.

Van Andel highlights three:

• Increase the observation surface
  Examine failures with the same care you give successes.
• Practice abductive reasoning
  Ask: What would have to be true for this mistake to be useful?
• Encourage cross-pollination
  Combine ideas from domains that appear unrelated and see where they spark.

Serendipity does not respond to force. It responds to attention.

The Takeaway

Pek van Andel reminds us that the most valuable things we discover are often the ones we weren’t looking for. The most valuable discoveries rarely announce themselves, and often arrive disguised as mistakes.

But an unsought finding only becomes a successful one if we are willing to pause our original quest and follow the anomaly.

Serendipity is not about waiting for luck. It is about having the rules in place to recognize a successful error when it shows up.
Our goal is to build the conditions that allow an unsought finding to be seen and followed, so that when the next successful error lands on your desk, you have the frameworks to recognize it.