Growing research indicates that business outcomes often involve some combination of effort and luck, or what is labeled serendipity—the unexpected discovery of opportunity brought about by purposeful action. Despite growing interest in serendipity, however, understanding remains limited about what firms can do to cultivate and leverage such unexpected findings. The current study demonstrates a positive relationship between firms’ preferences for handling tasks one at a time sequentially (monochronicity) and the occurrence of serendipity. Further, our findings illustrate a positive relationship between serendipity and innovation performance in new ventures, a relationship that is enhanced when firms operate in rapidly changing environments. Our study provides important implications for entrepreneurship and management research on the role of agency in cultivating serendipity and for important contextual constraints that shape the value serendipity generates.
