Breakthroughs aren't random. They're designed.
In Serendipity: It Doesn't Happen by Accident, David Cleevely - telecoms pioneer, deep tech investor, and architect of the Cambridge tech cluster - shows how the world's most successful ideas often emerge not from rigid plans, but from well-designed networks, environments, and a willingness to embrace the unexpected.
This book reveals how to build those conditions deliberately - whether you're leading a business, shaping public policy, or trying to create spaces where innovation can thrive. Drawing on complexity science, network theory, and decades of experience founding and funding over 60 companies - including the billion-dollar biotech firm Abcam, launched after a single dinner conversation - Cleevely offers a framework for making serendipity not just possible, but probable.
From 18th-century Birmingham to modern-day Cambridge, Silicon Valley, and Shenzhen, he explains how great innovation ecosystems operate - and why many institutions suppress the very dynamics that make discovery likely. You'll explore the "three-step rule" behind breakthrough environments, uncover why digital platforms can unintentionally reduce serendipity, and learn how a little structured inefficiency may be the secret to real progress.
Whether you're designing a new organisation, reforming an institution, building a startup - or simply trying to make better use of your own time and talent - Serendipity offers a fresh and practical way of thinking about innovation in a world that needs it more than ever.
Sprache
Verlagsort
Produkt-Hinweis
Fadenheftung
Gewebe-Einband
Maße
Höhe: 222 mm
Breite: 145 mm
Dicke: 23 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-1-0684392-3-0 (9781068439230)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Dr David Cleevely CBE FREng FIET is a serial entrepreneur, investor, and adviser to government on technology and innovation policy. He has founded or helped grow over 60 companies, including Abcam (sold for $6 billion), Analysys, Raspberry Pi, Focal Point Positioning, and Chemify. A key figure in building the Cambridge tech cluster, he co-founded Cambridge Angels, Cambridge Network, the Centre for Science and Policy, and Cambridge Ahead.He has been recognised with a CBE and honorary doctorates for his services to education, technology, and innovation. He lives in Cambridge, where serendipity often strikes while cycling across town or during spontaneous conversations at college gatherings - still creating the conditions for the next great idea.
