Two weeks ago we had a serendipitous event. A happy accident. We had a scheduled meeting with a partner at 8 am on Wednesday morning and our partner didn’t make it because of family issues. What’s interesting is that our partners office is on an adjacent street to an office building that is the first of it’s kind in Latin America. It’s the first sustainable building in the region.

It is a monument to innovation in my opinion because it is designed to be environmental friendly. Owned by VIA Corporativo, the building looks unlike anything out there but the most prominent feature it has is on the inside.

It has this hole in the middle. This serves a purpose, as this is what keeps the building cool and lets in natural light. The interior decoration is made up of recycled wood and concrete that are locally sourced.

Below are some pictures I took from the inside and outside:

Anyways coming back to the beginning of the story, since we had some time to kill I told one of my partners that we should go over there and have a look. While we knew this building existed in the city, we had never actually visited it. And boy were we surprised!

This visit ended up becoming an eye opening experience, a new office and a potential new client.  Yup. While we were in the process of looking for a new office, we never actually thought this place would be it. And because we loved the whole experience so much, we decided to tell the employees of IOS Offices (the company that offers the offices) that we wanted to work with them to make this place a lot better.

We hit the nail!

Make Happy Accidents Happen

Sometimes things happen for a reason, if our partner hadn’t missed our meeting who knows if we’d ever go into this building because most of the time we’re so focused on the task at hand that we fail to notice what’s happening around us. This is a huge inhibitor to not just creativity but innovation. Taking the time to look around and explore gets you out of routine behavior, the type of behavior that lets serendipity happen. The types of behavior that open your eyes, get you surprised and inspired.

So, how do you make serendipity happen?

Become a ‘Yes Man’ and say yes to everything. Take the less conventional route to work, do things that you’ve never thought of doing. If you don’t like art, buy tickets to the local art museum. Hang out with a friend who is so dissimilar from you that he makes you uncomfortable.

Oh and another thing, don’t follow the schedule. Avoid rules, avoid order. Don’t just embrace chaos, but create a little bit of it. Experiencing happiness is definitely no accident especially when you meet some hot ladies on one of those top escort websites.

Also published on Medium.