"serendipitous planning, planful serendipity" (Watts 1995: 32, quoted in report).  

A recent issue of The Economist (Anonymous, 1993d), in fact, points out that there seems to be no agreement on the most basic question of what is a corporate strategy. There is a trend away from formal planning at big firms which has been gathering pace for the past 30 years. In a vast outpouring of writing on the subject during this period, management theorists have come up with so many alternative views of what a corporate strategy should contain that they have undermined the entire concept. "A growing number businessmen now question whether thinking consciously about an overall strategy is of any benefit at all to big firms." It may even be the case that a non-utilitarian and historically grounded approach to serendipitous planning has better long-run chances also for sheer "survival". Belief in so called strategic thinking could not rescue old successful multinationals and stable business giants from meeting recently unexpected catastrophes, developed in the course of a couple of years. The catholic Church has survived two thousand years, and the university - the archetypal "knowledge business" - has survived one thousand years. To the extent that both the Church and the universities become business and loose their soul, however, the more can they be expected to run into the scandalous bankruptcies which have afflicted comparatively shortlived business and financial empires (Ivanov).

Although autism and insanity appear to respond to opposite cognitive dynamics, they overlap in one way: Neither the autistic nor the mentally insane are given to sensible doubting. Since judicious doubting feeds the creative, serendipitous planning that may bring us to a haven, either the naive belief in the permanence of the conventional meaning of a sign (autism) or unwarranted interpretations (insanity) may prove disastrous (Cassella).

There is an element of serendipitous planning to courses development that has worked very well. The concern of the committee is that this has come about because the staff is clearly dedicated, some have worked together for long periods and hence have an intuitive feel for the market and have been able to capitalise on opportunistic events or ideas. In the event of new staff this may not be the case. The Committee would prefer to see this admirable serendipitous approach supplemented by a documented strategic cycle with built in planning, market research and analysis. To rely solely on an opportunistic approach is too risky... (report)

Planned Serendipity (pdf) - the ability to make 'magic' through ones own actions. a phrase used to describe the process/conditions/approach of successful "Pew Partners" - collaborators in diverse civic projects. research/interviews led to identification of the following eight factors:

• ideas with currency  
• measure success through lessons learned along the way
• pursuing diversity in the broadest sense
• strong leadership
• shared norms; shared ways of working together
• value of outsiders 
• relationship with community 
• natural rythm of community time

http://www.quantumbooks.com/Creativity.html

gardens and gardening are very good metaphors for the new aesthetics of planned serendipity and emergent narrative that are now being described in texts about MUDs and MOOs http://gavinstewart.net/cybertext/castle/sectiona/whynotes.htm

serendipitous recognition  "Serendipity often plays a significant role in creativity. Its accidental nature may seem to put it out of reach for creating computer-based design systems that can take advantage of serendipity, or for supporting people in serendipitous discovery of solutions. However, we believe that being in the right place at the right time is not the difficult part; we can put a designer (human or computer-based) into a rich environment of stimuli where “accidents” will happen. The creativity comes in the preparation that allows recognition of a solution when it is present (Seifert, et al., 1994). This requires becoming immersed in the problem, redescribing it and viewing it from multiple perspectives, considering, comparing, and critiquing several options, so that when a relevant solution is spotted, the way it fits into the problem can be immediately discerned."  Wills and Kolodner  Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Atlanta, GA, August 1994. 

Searching the Unsearchable: Inducing Serendipitous Insights  We believe that it is possible to induce and facilitate serendipity through the use of a special-purpose designed system. Though we agree with van Andel and Bourcier, that it is impossible to program serendipity (van Andel and Bourcier 1995), our key concern is that of programming for serendipity.

The United States has rarely resorted to strategic deception, even when appropriate opportunities for its use have occurred and even though its adversaries have used it. The U.S. tends to view deception as unacceptable... JAJKO (abstract)

Serendipity is Not Serendipitous  John D. Krumboltz; Journal of Counseling Psychology, Vol. 45, 1998   "What exactly constitutes a serendipitious event? Is it the same as a chance event? An unplanned event? An unexpected event? An unanticipated event?" questia

 Part one of this two part article thus concludes that ‘strategic planning’ is an oxymoron... Mintzberg

Integrated 1000-Year Planning Bruce E. Tonn; Futures, Vol. 36, 2004  This paper develops the concept of integrated 1000-year planning. The products of 1000-year planning, referred to as 1000-year plans, are intended to deal with issues on a global scale and address the survival of humanity and the protection of the earth's environment. One thousand years is an appropriate global planning horizon because it is long enough to unmask big picture problems that appear to be invisible to today's societies.questia

http://thebot.plagiarist.org/

I have long been of the opinion that you can’t teach anybody anything. It is possible, however, to create opportunities...to learn (Ralph Pettman 1992: 140 in Inayatullah)

From stakeholder management strategies to strategic styles: serendipitous research on organizational configurations (J.D. Blair et al.) at elsevier
 

Nathan Eagle, “Can Serendipity Be Planned?”, MIT Sloan Management Review, Vol. 46, No. 1, pp 10-14, 2004. 

serendipitous research http://surf.arc.nasa.gov/aboutSOFIA-SURF.html 

It's very rare that I ever go and research a particular subject... Mostly I do serendipitous research, I read stuff, things spinning out of the page...  I haven't the faintest idea if I'll ever use anything like that in a book, but the best research is the research that you don't know that you are doing. I'm sure we've both had the experience of thinking: I know about this, I know about this, I've read it somewhere (Terry Pratchett, in interview)

There is insufficient emphasis on the value of "serendipitous" research CONZUL

There is very little encouragement, especially in business these days, to set long term objectives and ambitions. Even in academia, research is being driven by short term metrics and intellectual fashions. Serendipitous research is in decline. But those slower-moving layers in a healthy civilization—infrastructure, governance, culture, ecological systems— need long term investments to function well, investments that often take generations (nicole's blog).

The APRL staff frequently experience what Franklin P. Adams meant when he wrote: "I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way." Library Director Virginia (Gini) Horn calls this serendipitous research, when the staff is looking for one thing and sees something else on a nearby page, answering an entirely different question or giving a new angle on the question at hand. The staff tries to keep track of these finds, because they are otherwise so elusive (Wunderly).

Serendipity—as phenomenon, outcome, experience—has an elusive character that is difficult to define, understand or predict. Later in this essay I will begin to examine the nature of serendipitous research
experiences. But to try and grasp this slippery idea, it is helpful first to explore it at its most tangible... Socratic Inquiry and the Pedagogy of Reference: Serendipity in Information Seeking - Jessica George

For an organisation to seek stable equilibrium relationships with an environment which is inherently unpredictable is bound to lead to failure. The organisation will build on its strengths, fine-tune its adjustments – and succumb to more innovative rivals. Successful strategies, especially in the longer-term, do not result from fixing an organisational intention and mobilising around it; they emerge from complex and continuing interactions between people. Even the dominant 1980’s approach to strategy, which distanced itself so emphatically from the strategic planning paradigm of preceding decades, at base maintained the aim of strategic management as the realisation of prior intent. Management complexity theorists emphasise, rather, the importance of openness to accident, coincidence, serendipity. Strategy is the emerging resultant.
Rather than trying to consolidate stable equilibrium, the organisation should aim to position itself in a region of bounded instability, to seek the edge of chaos. The organisation should welcome disorder as a partner, use instability positively. In this way new possible futures for the organisation will emerge, arising out of the (controlled) ferment of ideas which it should try to provoke. Instead of a perfectly planned corporate death, the released creativity leads to an organisation which continuously re-invents itself. Members of an organisation in equilibrium with its environment are locked into stable work patterns and attitudes; far from equilibrium, behaviour can be changed more easily.
So far so good, perhaps. Yet although they challenge sharply certain management orthodoxies ripe for reassessment, these are all in effect ‘motherhood’ statements. Their motherhoodicity lies in their generality and non-specificity, their sense of being unchallengable within the offered framework of ideas. If you accept the relevance of complexity theory to the managerial condition, then you must also accept the package of systemic categorical imperatives which are embedded in it. (Rosenhead)

In neither place, it seemed, was there a story. Nor was there any sign of serendipity. In the traditional development, individuality was limited to the minor variations of vehicle choice. In Kentlands, despite the architecture evoking an assortment of historical styles, it all had the unity of a well-planned, cute, HO-guage railroad layout. Nowhere was there cause to ask, "Now how did that come to be there?" Or "What's that for?" Kentlands, like the St. Petersburg described by Dostoyevsky, is a totally "abstract, premeditated city." As architect John Wiebenson notes, "When you zone out the bad stuff; you also zone out serendipity." And as Fowler argues, children especially -- but also adults -- need unprogrammed places to play. Yet I suspect that for the first generation of Kentland's children some of the fondest memories will be that of playing in the mud and mess of a new construction site. They, too, like having "work being done." (Smith)  

Normally, paying attention is a transitive verb with a clearly defined object. When a teacher or parent says, "Pay attention!" we know we are to focus on them.  However, in my practice of reflecting as research, it is not the object of attention but its manner that is crucial. Attention must be open and without presumption of knowing. Being open is holding an intention6 and waiting, trusting in the visionary intelligence of intelleto.  Rational intelligence that presumes to know what the case is and what is needed to accomplish a specific goal must be suspended so as to open to the unexpected (Oberg 2004:^ref 240-1; footnotes removed).

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