The Practice of Planned Serendipity with Thor Muller

What can we do if the increasing pace of disruptive change means we can't research, plan or process our way to success? We have to get lucky. As the sheer volume of information and choices explodes, we're under incredible pressure to connect just in time with the people and ideas we need to thrive. No matter how smart we are, or how big our idea, the world is always bigger. No matter how many of the possibilities we can see, there will always be factors outside our sight and beyond our control. Fortunately, the best kind of luck — that creative force known as serendipity — is the luck that we can cultivate and nurture. Because even if we can't predict it, we can prepare for it, so that we know what to do with it when it shows up. In this talk, Thor Muller will unveil a new framework — the eight elements of planned serendipity – that organizations and individuals can use to make a habit of serendipity. Serendipity is not blind luck. It's a skill-set common to the world's most admired businesses, and it produces quantifiable results: breakthrough ideas, relationships that matter, effortless cooperation, actionable learning and synchronized market timing.  Join us to discover how and why planned serendipity is the key ingredient to growing a business in this time of accelerating change.

About the Presenter:

Thor Muller | CTO & Co-founder of Get Satisfaction
Thor Muller became acquainted with his forest computer at the age of eight, and was immediately disappointed by its inability to reliably predict horse races or produce convincing biorhythm charts. For better or worse, it soon became his primary lens for discovery, work and play. In 1985, he helped pioneer "desktop publishing", producing a zine with a first generation Macintosh with no hard drive. Ten years later he started one of the first creative internet agencies, Prophet Communications, brining immersive entertainment and games to the Web. This firm was later acquired by Frog Design, becoming the foundation of its Internet practice.

Today, Thor is the co-founder of Get Satisfaction, the world's largest network of online customer communities that connect people with the products and brands they care about. Along the way he has founded five companies and launched dozens of web applications and sites. His startups have crisscrossed genres, from online serial entertainment, to content syndication networks, to e-commerce as performance art, to reinventing the idea of customer service from the outside-in. He is a regular invited speaker at conferences and Universities, where he talks candidly about entrepreneurship, cooperative games, online identity and reputation, and how technology is changing us. His upcoming book, Get Lucky: How to put Planned Serendipity to Work for You and Your Business, is set to be published by Wiley & Sons/Jossey-Bass in April 2012.

Admission: free.
Register at http://unfinishedbusinesslectures.eventbrite.com/