Founder of Zappos, Tony Hsieh’s Rule for Success- Maximise Serendipity
This article from Inc. about Tony Hsieh – founder of Zappos, is interesting when we think about what we hope for with Kingdom Code. He is rebuilding downtown Los Vegas to accelerate serendipity:
Tony Hsieh is a serial entrepreneur who co-founded Zappos, the online shoe and clothing retailer he now runs. He’s also co-founder of the Downtown Project, which is seeking to revitalize Las Vegas’s downtown:
My fascination with serendipity started in college. I think for most people, college was the last time it was normal to just randomly run into people all the time. As you get older, you drive to work, see the same people every day, then go home. But the best things happen when people are running into each other and sharing ideas.
At Zappos, we do a lot to get people running into each other. At our office, for example, there are exits on all four sides of the building. We’ve locked them all except one. It’s more inconvenient, but we prioritize collisions over convenience. The Downtown Project, our drive to revitalize downtown Las Vegas, does the same thing, but on a much bigger scale. We thought, How can we get people in the city to run into each other more often? So we’re moving our office into the old city-hall building, and we’ve already got 10 tech start-ups to set up nearby. It’s all about maximizing collisions and accelerating serendipity….
Check out his interview on this video
What ideas can we draw from this for Kingdom Code? All comments welcome…
Rupert