Serendipity: It Doesn’t Happen by Accident – David Cleevely

New Book Reveals How to Actively Create Luck and Engineer Innovation

“A dinner conversation once led me to set up Abcam, a company that later sold for $ 6 billion,” says Dr David Cleevely CBE, telecoms pioneer, deep tech investor and innovation ecosystem architect. “Now, was that just luck, or something we can understand and replicate?”

In his new book, Serendipity: It Doesn’t Happen by Accident, David Cleevely challenges conventional thinking around chance and innovation. He argues that, far from being the result of random good fortune, serendipity(the discovery of valuable, unexpected outcomes)can be deliberately cultivated. And, with the right environments, networks, and mindset, we can all change the odds in our favour engineering serendipity instead of waiting for it to happen. Drawing on decades of experience founding, funding, and advising over 60 businesses, including Abcam, Analysys, Raspberry Pi, Cambridge Angels, and Focal Point Positioning-Cleevely blends personal stories, practical insight, and theoretical rigour, challenging the belief that innovation happens through rigid planning and risk management. Cleevely says, “The traditional approach to innovation tries to eliminate chance. But what if we’re doing it backward?What if the most strategic thing we can do is deliberately create more opportunities for the unexpected to happen? Serendipity isn’t magic. It’s strategy. Whether in business, science, public policy, or our personal lives, we can create conditions now that will make positive breakthroughs more likely in the future.”

Cleevely argues that the most successful ecosystems(Cambridge, Silicon Valley, Shenzhen) share one crucial trait: reduced distance between people and the resources, capabilities, and collaborators they need. In Cambridge, that might mean running into someone unexpectedly at a seminar or over coffee; in Shenzhen, it means accessing design advice, prototyping, and components almost instantly. But, while the cultures differ, the outcome is the same: ideas and execution collide quickly, often unexpectedly, and frequently within what Cleevely calls the ‘three-step rule ’- the ability to reach something useful within just three links across a network.

The book goes on to reveal how declining productivity and innovation rates across developed economies may be linked to institutional designs that inadvertently suppress serendipity with corporate silos to government bureaucracies optimising for predictability rather than breakthrough potential.

Cleevely observes: “We’re running out of runway. Innovation feels harder, not because we lack ideas, but because rising complexity and even well-meaning technologies can limit our choices. Yet by designing systems that foster exploration, productivity, and delivery, we can raise the odds of discovery and build the basis for long-term, inclusive prosperity.

“This book is about how serendipity works–and, whether you’re an entrepreneur, policymaker, technologist, or simply someone curious, it will help you to see serendipity not as something to passively await, but as something you can actively create and use. In a world increasingly obsessed with control, learning to harness the unexpected through engineered serendipity may just become the most strategic skill of all.”