Serendipity and being open to the unexpected

... to a certain extent. We may not directly affect major opportunities of our life at any given moment (like finding oil on our property), but we can indirectly influence how many opportunities spring up and the ferocity with which we pursue them.

• Be a social butterfly: Lucky people enjoy relating to other people.
• Periodically do something stupid: Luck is more likely to fall on those who take a dumb risk or two.
• Maximize your positive luck and minimize the negative one.
• Be optimistic: Our performance usually rises to the level of our expectations.

If you have a goal in mind, imagine the stepping stones to your success. Seeing each detail in the path to success is key.

Lucky people give freely of their time and resources.

Giving reminds us of how lucky we already are.

Elon Musk uses decision trees to make big decisions (a tool that uses a tree-like graph or model of decisions and their possible consequences, outcomes, and resources). They are particularly useful for avoiding stupid risks and big bets that aren’t likely to succeed.

Most became a billionaire by making unlikely big bets, as their expected return statistically was much higher than safer bets.

One of the best ways to get information is not from just being better at searching Google, it’s from learning how to build a network and get the information you need through that network. 

This network should include people’s lessons learned and hacks, topics that are too sensitive to talk about because they make someone look bad, and tacit knowledge (knowledge that people have but aren’t able to articulate).

• The most critical topic for young innovators are quality education (42%) and decent work and economic growth (38%).
• The cause of these concerns: 20-year-olds are transitioning from school to work, and are facing challenges and inequalities in these areas.

Regional issues act as important motivations for young innovators when they decide to work on a specific project. These issues are usually as urgent as global ones, but get less funding in general.

They can lead young innovators to come up with highly localised, impactful solutions.

An intrapreneur can be defined as someone who thinks like an entrepreneur but brings their ideas to the company where they are employed instead of launching their own business. 

Instate a "no idea is a bad idea" policy, gather the support your employees need to try out their ideas and let them pitch decision-makers at your company.

This allows employees to spend 15 % of their paid work time daydreaming, doodling or experimenting with ideas that don’t necessarily have to do with their work at the company.

This kind of daydreaming is the genesis of invention and fosters passion for one’s work.

He wondered how he could predict the probability of a future event if he only knew how many times it had occurred, or not, in the past. Bayes figured out that even when it comes to uncertain outcomes, we can update our knowledge by incorporating new, relevant information as it becomes available.

His theorem describes the probability of an event, based on prior knowledge of conditions that might be related to the event.

Data can be imperfect, incomplete, or uncertain. Most of the time, there is more than one explanation for why things happened the way they did; by examining those alternative explanations using probability, you can gain a better understanding of causality and what is really going on.

Mental disorders that are unchecked and untreated in employees(and their family) often lead to reduced productivity, increase in workplace accidents, with a majority of the employees suffering from decreased concentration at work.

Treating mental health is not a big investment and employers can be the facilitators to reverse the grim scenario.

1. Becoming aware of the workplace environment and the policies that might adversely impact the employees.
2. Learn from leaders and engage in employee wellbeing.
3. Follow other companies who have taken necessary steps to curb mental health issues at the workplace.
4. Understand the unique needs and opportunities of your workforce to develop tailored policies.
5. Take practical steps like initiating training programs and facilitating the various workplace wellbeing strategies.
6. Many workers have a stigma attached to seeking help for mental health problems and need to be educated about the process while making it frictionless.
7. Remember that mental health is linked to everything, including physical and economic health.

Struggling with limited resources is a good formula for small companies, but is not easy to replicate in large corporations.

Innovation comes when companies are not focused on new ways to sell old successful products by re-marketing or repackaging them but to invent new products and compete in new industries.

Human beings as a species are not built for abundance and paradoxically achieve peak productivity with constraints and limited resources.

There is no 'circle of safety' in small companies, and survival is a very real concern. This makes the people pull themselves together and out-think their problems, succeeding by effort, not by financial resources.

The Scotch tape was released at the start of the Great Depression when people had to mend and make do.

People used the transparent tape for everything. While many companies were going under, tape sales helped the company to grow.

• William McKnight, the executive who told Richard Drew to stop working on Scotch tape, became chairman of Scotch, then known as 3M's board. Drew helped McKnight understand that experimentation could lead to innovation.
• McKnight developed a policy known as the 15 percent rule, which allows engineers to spend 15 percent of their work hours on experimental doodling.
• After his tape successes, Drew led a Products Fabrication Laboratory for 3M, where he could freely develop new ideas.
• He and his team filed 30 patents for inventions, from face masks to reflective sheeting for road signs. He also mentored young engineers to develop their ideas.