The Serendipity Machine

The notion of serendipity is not new to business thinking. The importance of unexpected conversations and knowledge exchange

in innovation has been noted in the management literature for many years. What is new is actually building a business – a machine – that systematically facilitates serendipity. This book

presents a disruptive business model that allows you to do exactly that. It is based on a study of Seats2meet.com, the Dutch network

of physical coworking, office and meeting spaces.

 By reinventing social capital as the currency of network culture and fusing it with the phenomenon of serendipity, Seats2meet.com has

created a serendipity machine that increasingly looks like an appropriate platform for value creation in a network economy, fusing traditional monetary capital with social capital. It has

effectively put into practice something academics have been feverishly looking for for the last two decades. And the key to it all is serendipity.


Seats2meet.com has created a business model that provides a platform for the digital bohemians, knowmads, free agents, or independent professionals as well as corporate nomads to unleash their creative powers. By co-creating the infrastructure today’s creative revolution needs in order to crystallize, Seats2meet.com

has projected itself into the future of capitalism. Creative revolution has become the company’s business. It can become

yours as well!


Sebastian Olma, PhD,  is an international scholar and expert working at the interface between creativity and economy. Trained as a philosopher as well as an organizational economist, he helps

companies and organizations to effectively and sustainably make the most of their innovative potential. He lives in Amsterdam,

where he divides his professional time between running his consulting company, The Think Tank (thethinktank.nl), and codirecting the Creative Industries Research Centre Amsterdam at

the University of Amsterdam.


Yulia Kryazheva  is an architect and researcher, has worked on a diverse range of projects in the areas of architecture and urban renewal, service design and illustration, creative consulting. This

practice gave shape to her current professional domain: design thinking & visual communication. From her studio, Yulia Ink (yulia-ink.com) in Rotterdam, she works for clients all over Europe.


B. Joseph Pine II  is an internationally acclaimed author, speaker, and management advisor to Fortune 500 companies and entrepreneurial

start-ups alike. Mr. Pine co-founded Strategic Horizons LLP, a thinking studio dedicated to helping businesses conceive and design new ways of adding value to their economic offerings.

A prolific  writer, in 2011 he updated his best-selling The Experience Economy  (with Jim Gilmore) and co-wrote Infinite Possibility: Creating Customer Value on the Digital Frontier  (with Kim Korn).