Abstract
Serendipity refers to uncontrolled circumstances that lead to unexpected yet fortunate discoveries. The phenomenon has been studied extensively in relation to information retrieval. However, serendipity in the context of social encounters has been the subject of few empirical studies. In professional life, social serendipity might result in benefits such as fruitful collaboration, successful recruitment, discovery of novel information, and acquisition of crucial new perspectives from peers. Despite the potential significance of serendipity, particularly for knowledge work, there is a lack of empirical understanding of related subjective experiences and the role of technology within the process of encountering unsought findings. This qualitative study investigates knowledge workers’ detailed narratives of serendipitous social encounters and the related factors through an analysis of 37 responses to an international online survey. We provide a detailed account of the experiential characteristics and contextual qualities of the reported instances of social serendipity. Finally, we discuss the seemingly minor role of technology in social serendipity and research avenues to computationally enhance social serendipity.
Highlights
Originating in the 18th century [1], the concept of serendipity has been researched as a phenomenon of uncontrolled circumstances that lead to unexpected yet fortunate discoveries [2]
We argue that the experience of social serendipity that takes place naturally outside the workplace is an indicator of successful, desirable knowledge work
Is research is driven by the following questions: (RQ1) What characterizes serendipity in the context of social encounters among knowledge workers? (RQ2) What behavioral and experiential processes are associated with social serendipity? rough an analysis of 37 knowledge workers’ selfreported narrations of their experiences of serendipitous social encounters, we provide a detailed account of the various experiential and contextual qualities that impact social serendipity
Summary
Originating in the 18th century [1], the concept of serendipity has been researched as a phenomenon of uncontrolled circumstances that lead to unexpected yet fortunate discoveries [2]. Earlier research in human-computer interaction (HCI) and computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) was designed to capture serendipity within established work environments, with the aim to facilitate intraorganizational knowledge creation and dissemination. Natural serendipity has been approached in exploratory studies on daily, spontaneous encounters [15] and social awareness [16] in co-located work environments. Constructive research on artificial serendipity has focused on designing systems that enable chance encounters or so-called impromptu encounters [17], with the aim to enhance social awareness and interactions among collocated or distributed workers. In the context of information retrieval, a typical example of artificial serendipity is enabling surprising, novel discoveries in content-based recommender systems to improve the diversity of recommendations [18,19,20]
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