Manufacturing serendipity

The vision for this series is to surface and share insights of thought-leaders and trailblazers who live at the cutting edge of technology. While the opinions featured may not necessarily represent those of Verizon and its employees, we still believe that we can each learn from experiences and opinions of others, which is why we’ve chosen to feature them here. This dialogue is how we take the first steps towards making innovations that matter.

I can’t take credit for this term, though I wish I came up with it as it simply encapsulates the road to success for so many people; hard work, vision, and determination. How does someone manufacture serendipity? From my experience with start-ups and at brands such as Verizon, it comes down to speaking with people to learn as much as you can, synthesizing the learnings to design ideas, and then building momentum around those ideas.

The first step to manufacture serendipity

The first step is speaking with people by getting “out into the field.” That is how this project, “Designing Innovation” is commencing. The first phase is to speak with passionate, innovation-minded professionals, all with a diverse set of backgrounds and visions. Do I know where this will lead? No. But as I continue to learn from these innovators many opportunities appear, and sparks emerge that can be designed into ideas. The vision for this project is to surface the experiences, trends and insights that can be shared with a wider audience to learn from, to take their own first steps towards the innovations that matter to them.

The Verizon purpose

The Verizon purpose is to “Deliver the promise of the digital world.” This statement doesn’t say, “phones,” or “robots.” The mission of our company is to deliver on the promise, to connect people, to empower people to do and access the things they want, when they want, digitally. This project aims to succeed on this mission.

So far we’ve spoken with innovators in fashion tech, community finance, online education, food tech, coding academies, purpose-driven entrepreneurs, educators, and visionaries. We’ll share these interviews with you as a series posted here on our news center. Then, as we share our learnings with you and each other, we’ll see what ideas develop that can be designed into something more formal. As example, some ideas have been to create a conference, or a podcast series, or a documentary film series. Others have found new connections, ways in which they can work together and share resources collaboratively. The future is ripe with potential. Let’s go manufacture some serendipity!

Read more conversations from this series:

• The Valley isn't interested
• The "co" in "coworking" is for community
• This tech founder is way ahead of all of us
• Making good things scale, globally
• Tech that breaks the cycle of poverty
• Showing the way into a tech life
• The future of health will be mobile
• The future is wondrously human
• Leadership success in our diverse and accelerated era
• For learning to scale, time needs to be fluid
• Re-envisioning the food supply
• There’s more to your beautiful plate of food than you realize
• Diversity in Tech - The tech population doesn’t reflect the true population

Jason Moriber is a creative communicator with a background in social and digital for CSR, tech and start-ups. He’s working within the Communications team at Verizon, charged with developing a new model for corporate and brand communications. Connect with him on Twitter @jasonmoriber or on Instagram @designinginnovation