When manufacturing serendipity, the key is maintaining humanity.
Your efforts must enhance, not replace, organic interactions. Don’t force connections.
Start small – pilot low-stakes matchmaking versus organisation-wide mandates.
Make participation opt-in, feedback-driven. Don’t be creepy.
Prioritise privacy. Be transparent on data collected and how it’s used.
Anonymise and aggregate data to uncover macro trends.
Focus on quality over quantity of connections. Measure meaningful collisions not just number of introductions. Depth over breadth.
Allow self-expression. Your teams will feel comfortable when they can represent their interests, skills and ideas authentically.
Seed diverse perspectives. Include introverts, new hires, marginalised groups – don’t just reward extroverts.
Make space for reflection. Serendipity requires time for ideas to percolate and random dots to connect.
Watch that it doesn’t become disruptive. Optimise for enhancing flow versus interrupting focus.
Maintain an inspiring physical work environment. Virtual connections still thrive when grounded in real-world community.
Enable humans to be “curators” and groom the algorithms. Leverage emotional intelligence.
The ideal digital serendipity tool is thoughtfully human-centric. It recognises recommending humans requires empathy. Surfaces helpfulness, not disruption. Fosters belonging.
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