The Open Innovation 2.0 Conference was held on 8th – 9th June in Otaniemi, Finland. It was the 3rd time when open innovation practitioners and researchers met in this context, the two previous events were organized in Dublin.

Karostech’s Founder and Partner Ilkka Kakko was invited to organize and chair a panel session especially dedicated to serendipity. This was the very first time when serendipity was taken into the agenda of any EU level conference, thanks to the organizers for this insightful decision.

Ilkka invited distinguished international experts to join the panel: Anabel Quan-Haase flew all the way from Canada, Andreas Krueger from Germany and Sebastian Olma from the Netherlands. They all gave 15 mins introductory talks from different perspectives. Anabel presented the academic perspective, Andreas explained some practical urban development cases from Berlin and Sebastian took the social and cultural perspective stating that the cultural roots of serendipity can be found in hippie movement and the science of cybernetics. “Making Love and War” – slogan was presented as the manifesto of that . The audience of 40-50 people participated actively into the discussion and one the final outcomes of the panel was the definition of serendipity in Open Innovation 2.0 context: “Serendipity is the art of benefiting from unexpected” .

The elaboration of the topic at EU-level and the plans for further actions in promoting serendipity research and piloting cases are now well under way, partly thanks to all participants of the panel session. We will meet again next year, this time again in jolly Dublin.

Cover photo: Sebastian Olma with his statement on stage

Side Photo: Preparation for the panel, left Sebastian Olma, center Andreas Krueger, right Anabel Quan-Haase.