Years ago, I wrote about my personal approach to life and work: connecting the dots. Instead of rigid New Year’s resolutions or elaborate strategies, I chose to stay open, mindful, and engaged with my surroundings. When I’m fully present—focusing on each moment and contributing whatever I can—unexpected connections emerge. Dots appear that I can link together, leading to insights in my personal life and even in business decisions. But when I’m passive or disconnected, nothing happens. Those dots simply don’t show up.

At the time, this felt almost intuitive, even magical.

Discovering the Science of Serendipity

Little did I know there was rigorous science backing it up.

Recently, I came across a fascinating academic paper by Dr. Christian Busch, published in the Journal of Management Studies: “Towards a Theory of Serendipity: A Systematic Review and Conceptualization”.

Busch, known for his work on purpose-driven innovation and author of the bestselling book The Serendipity Mindset, synthesizes decades of research to define and explain serendipity—those surprising and valuable discoveries that seem to happen by chance.

What Makes Serendipity Happen?

Busch clarifies that true serendipity isn’t mere blind luck. It requires three necessary conditions:

1. Surprise (an unexpected trigger or unplanned moment).
2. Agency (we actively notice it, make decisions, and connect it to something meaningful).
3. Value (it leads to a positive, valuable outcome).

He defines serendipity as: “surprising discovery that results from unplanned moments in which our decisions and actions lead to valuable outcomes.”

This aligns perfectly with “connecting the dots”: the dots are the unexpected triggers, and our mindfulness and explorative mindset provide the agency to link them into something valuable.

Cultivating Serendipity at Multiple Levels

Busch’s theory goes further, framing the cultivation of serendipity as a multi-level process—individual, organizational, and even societal. At the personal level, it involves developing alertness, openness, and a willingness to reframe surprises as opportunities. Organizations can foster it through flexible structures, diverse networks, and cultures that encourage experimentation rather than strict control.

An Active Mindset for an Unpredictable World

This research validates what I’ve experienced: serendipity isn’t passive waiting for luck. It’s an active mindset. By staying connected to our environment, being mindful, and contributing positively, we create the conditions for those valuable connections to appear.

In a world that often prioritizes efficiency, planning, and predictability, embracing serendipity reminds us that some of the greatest breakthroughs—in life, innovation, and relationships—come from the unexpected. As Busch’s work shows, we can train this “serendipity muscle” just like any other skill.

If you’re interested in diving deeper, I highly recommend Busch’s paper (and his book). It might just help you spot—and connect—your next dot.

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⁃ start your day with a smile,

⁃ meditate,

⁃ learn,

⁃ exercise,

⁃ drink water, coffee and a glass of wine,

⁃ eat less,

⁃ communicate in a non-violent way

⁃ scrutinize rules,

⁃ be creative,

⁃ help,

⁃ listen, and

⁃ make love.

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Media outlets switch from the term climate change to climate crisis because environmental developments have to be addressed urgently if we want to keep our planet habitable. Politically, we notice a strengthening of parties at the far-right and far-left spectrums and increasingly irrational behavior of leading politicians who seem not to be aware of their responsibilities as heads of governments. Due to environmental, but also economic reasons, there is a mass migration underway that brings millions of people from the southern hemisphere to Europe and other rich areas. — a migration caused by poverty, wars, and other conflicts with the refugees’ single hope for living peaceful, secure lives. This inflow of immigrants also results in huge challenges for governments and people living in rich countries having to somehow share many aspects of their rich lifestyles with millions of new arrivals, most of them not used to western conventions and democratic mores.

At the moment, convincing strategies to meet these challenges are missing. Now and then, some politicians, scientific task forces, or entrepreneurs come up with bold plans, such as installing bases on other planets in order to relocate humankind when planet earth has stopped functioning. Then there is AI, a technological development that awakes the same amount of enthusiasm and belief in the future as skepticism and fear of an uncontrollable behemoth that will subjugate human beings based on its superior intelligence. And there are thousands of mostly grassroots-driven, well-intended activities, many of them somewhat extreme or solitarily designed and therefore rather impractical.

Language And Storytelling

In his fascinating book Sapiens, Israeli historian Yuval Harari describes language and storytelling as the most differentiating abilities of homo sapiens compared to other mammals. For him, modern man has successfully survived and displaced other hominins because of this Cognitive Revolution. The language was the tool to suppress speechless contemporaries and to easily pass knowledge horizontally within huge populations as well as vertically from generation to generation. Unfortunately, wars of religion, autocratic jurisdictions and the more modern phenomenon of fake news have uncovered the flip side of language and storytelling: simple stories make people around the globe kill each other, allow governments and religious leaders to dictate terms for correct clothing and enable democratically elected presidents to trick and deceive as only con artists do.

Beginnings Of A New Era

At the end of the 19th century, there were first indications of a new era in understanding human capabilities. When, in 1890, Harvard psychologist William James published The Principles of Psychology, he was praised in America and Europe both by academics and lay readers. Some declared it a classic and likened it to Moby Dick. James transformed both, psychology and philosophy by popularizing his thesis of pragmatism, a way of thinking that argues human beings must test their beliefs and decisions by results. James invented the phrase “stream of consciousness” to describe the workings of our minds. For him, our thinking is not orderly or logical, but chaotic, and our moods constantly and inexplicably shifting. Without the knowledge of modern neuroscience, the synapses that connect billions of neurons, and neurotransmitters, such as dopamine and oxytocin, he wasn’t able to peer into the brain. Still, he was (one of) the first to state that human beings should be aware of the combination of their mental and physical abilities that by far exceed their physical abilities, alone.

In the past, development in most parts of the world has been regarded as a primarily technical development — first in terms of hardware and, with the advent of the computer, increasingly in terms of software. Any conference, task force, or scientific study that addresses “the future” mainly covers technological developments. I think, this is — an absolutely necessary — but entirely insufficient strategy to ensure the survival of homo sapiens on planet earth. It is my belief that humans living in the 21st century must meet a very individual challenge first, in order to commonly survive as a population: we must start the Mindful Revolution.

After The Cognitive Revolution Comes The Mindful Revolution

For me, the Mindful Revolution is the logical next step built on top of Harari’s Cognitive Revolution. A common feature of both revolutions is that neither one solves any major problem per se — but each one provides human beings with a toolset that can be used to leverage the abilities of individuals and populations to the next level of life. As with language and storytelling, mindfulness isn’t something that has been invented quite recently, but something that has been around for hundreds if not thousands of years. Whereas some scientists believe that Neanderthals living 300,000 years ago, could speak, Gutenberg invented the first printer quite sometime later, around 1440. That machine allowed stories to be distributed efficiently for the first time. The first signs of mindfulness appeared with the advent of Buddhism, in the 5th century BCE. In today’s Tibet, China and India many scholars teach behaviors and attitudes such as compassion, self-compassion, altruism, and others. In Western sciences of recent date, these teachings have been regarded as esoteric or folklore, measured against modern scientific frameworks. This chasm has started closing due to the fact that more and more knowledge about and results of mindfulness practice has been confirmed with scientifically collected and computed data gauged by high-tech medical gear.

High Demands On Ourselves

At the beginning of the 21st century, we know for sure that human beings know little about themselves, that we only use a tiny fraction of one of our mots important endogenous resources — our brains. In other words: we run the show — i.e. ruin our planet and kill our fellow human beings — without knowing ourselves in-depth, utilizing just a fraction of our capabilities. This must not be our expectations. As a humanist, my expectation must be to learn to know myself, to feel self-compassion, and thereby compassion for others. As an enlightened academic, I must utilize my endogenous resources in the best possible way — and I must not accept to capitalize on only 10% of my skill set.

What is the Mindful Revolution?

In short, Mindful Revolution means that human beings know themselves (gnothi seauton), feel self-compassion and compassion for others. The Mindful Revolution enables mankind to capitalize on the maximum of each individual’s physical and mental abilities. The Mindful Revolution enables human beings to develop a new, much broader perspective on life in general and on themselves and fellow human beings specifically. The Mindful Revolution allows for more tolerance, compassion, and understanding, enables people to develop ways and tools for cooperation and collaboration, and in the best case, a new way of jointly saving ourselves and our planet.

Mindfulness is a change that starts within and stays within the individual. By changing oneself, a person becomes more aware of herself, her sensations and capabilities, and, in the next step, more open for her environment including her fellow human beings. Without creating strategies, developing tactics, and planning details, the mindful person opens herself up for any external input. She experiences more sensations on a deeper level and is able to act and behave intuitively in a seemingly effortless way. There are more good things that happen to her, people treat her in a friendlier way, finding solutions to problems becomes easy. The reason for a better flow in life is not any kind of magic of randomness — it is a better utilization of the individual‘s resources, especially her brain. I am not speaking of anecdotal evidence — these effects have been measured and quantified in many scientific studies.

Whether it’s about schoolchildren with experiences in mindfulness practice, inhabitants of retirement homes, athletes, or the average working person, mindfulness results in a quantifiable improvement,ent of a person‘s lifestyle. In recent years, more and more individuals have learned about these positive effects of training without side effects. If this knowledge could be spread further and faster, more people, groups, and, finally, populations could benefit. We should teach our children, and we should integrate mindfulness into school curriculums. Mindfulness should become a mandatory subject in any kind of educational institution. In 2013, Ohio congressman Tim Ryan took this challenge seriously and started Mindful Nation, a non-profit foundation and education outlet teaching mindfulness to everyday Americans.

Mindfulness beats AI

Mindful human beings don‘t have to fear any kind of malicious AI. Whereas AI can easily take over computable tasks from human beings and outperform us in calculations, it should take ages before an AI would be able to emulate our mind. The human cortex alone has 30bn neurons and is capable of making 1 million billion synaptic connections, i.e. at least 10 followed by a million zeros. Knowing that the universe consists of 10 followed by 79 zeros particles, it becomes clear why mindfulness beats Artificial Intelligence, easily.

Beside all meaningful activities, and living a peaceful and eco-conscious life — we have the ability to and must start the Mindful Revolution — now!

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Mostly, a few hours strolling around a lake (what a great experience at Lake Starnberg today — just look at the featured image) are enough to get things straight in my mind, be it business-related or private stuff. While some of my friends and peers come up with personal ‘themes’ that provide the framework and guidance for their activities in the new year — here is a nice example by Maria Sipka — some time ago, I chose a different strategy for myself: I try to connect the dots.

Perhaps ‘strategy’ is not the appropriate term; it has rather become a way of life for me. Inspired by some great philosophical and spiritual minds, I started to look out for situations, events, people, and feelings that somehow fit together. With fitting together, I mean a certain connection between these otherwise completely independent elements of my environment. Sometimes, this connection is laid out quite clearly; sometimes, I need some more time to see it. When looking out for these connections, I’m aware of the very human confirmation bias; i.e., connected elements do not necessarily represent desired outcomes. It’s more about perceiving correlations if you want the data perspective.

Mathematical Platonism — Connecting The Dots

When I started to look for dots to be connected, my goal was to use that for my personal life. How amazed I was when I realized that this also works in business. Instead of pondering on business strategies and models, the answers to questions such as: How to define this business vertical or build this product? With whom to partner?  Or how to frame this proposal? comes quite naturally by being aware of the environment and doing what seems to make the most sense in a given situation. Sometimes, these answers don’t appear on the spot, e.g. in a meeting. Then, it’s a good idea not to decide on that topic but let it go and switch to a different topic, and to move this question to the next day or week. Often, the needed information or answers come up shortly afterward, in situations totally unrelated to the original topic, such as lying in bed, showering, or running in the forest.

Connecting The Dots — The Intuition Of An Explorative Mind

As easy or almost magical as all this might sound, there’s a catch. You, or at least I myself, won’t see dots to be connected without being intensely connected to my environment and being mindful, respectively. I know that for sure since I have tried it out. In times, I tried to do the trick by being lazy and waiting for things to happen, but nothing happened. Or, in other words, I wasn’t able to see any dots I could connect. On the other hand, as soon as I focus on each moment, getting the most out of each situation, and add whatever I can to the situation, the dots appear again. Being mindful sometimes doesn’t come easy — there are situations when body and soul just want to go the easy way. But little is more rewarding than realizing the rewards of being attentive and sensitive.

Intuition in Action — Connecting The Dots

The funny aspect of connecting the dots is this: nobody will believe you that you might base all of your business (or private) decisions on that kind of seemingly esoteric stuff, such as waiting for things to happen. Most people would assume that you use other strategies or techniques since they themselves would never trust in an intuitive or gut behavior like that. But that doesn’t matter at all. If you connect the dots, you will feel the ease of that way of life, and you won’t lose it again. That’s at least what happened to me. For me, there’s no other theme for this year than to connect the dots — the intuition of an explorative mind.

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