Professor Richard J. Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire is the leading global expert on the psychology of luck. In one of his many experiments, he asked a group of people to read a newspaper and count the number of photographs. Previously, the respondents had been asked whether they identified as lucky or unlucky. Amazingly, the ‘lucky’ individuals completed the task in seconds, whereas the ‘unlucky’ ones took a couple of minutes on average. The reason was that there was an advert on page two of the newspaper, saying: “Stop counting – there are 42 photographs in this newspaper.” Only the ‘lucky’ respondents had seen it.

Wiseman used this finding to argue that luck is partly due to being alert to opportunities outside of the core task you’re working on. Lucky people tend to have better peripheral vision, whereas unlucky people tend to focus on the job at hand. Wiseman has repeated this experiment with other individuals many times, with the same results. But the reason I think it’s so interesting is that I believe it applies to organisations too. Let me explain.

All too often, we create a corporate culture that is highly task-oriented and doesn’t allow for serendipity. In fact, luck is seen as a bad thing, which should be eliminated from our processes - “don’t leave anything to chance!” - rather than allowed to flourish. This has been especially true over the last 12 months when we’ve all been hit by a tidal wave of misfortune and our natural instinct has understandably been to avoid further uncertainty or unexpected events. We need to remind ourselves that luck can be a force for good too but only if we recognise it, when it waves to us from afar.

In my book I devote a whole section to this phenomenon. It contains lots of case-studies and practical tips for marketers to “look out for opportunities everywhere”. But for the purposes of brevity, I’ll just pick out a few themes.

Broaden your vision      

We have all been taught the four Ps of marketing: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. But in recent years, we’ve become increasingly focused on the last of these. Don’t get me wrong; as a founder of a creative agency, I am a huge believer in the power of communication. But I’m also conscious that the other three Ps offer more exciting possibilities than ever before, thanks to improvements in technology and the development of new business models.

In the book I cite Pinduoduo as an example: it’s become an enormous success in China because of its “team purchasing” functionality and integration with WeChat. It’s not an ad campaign but I doubt you’ll find a better example of creative marketing than this.

Surround yourself with eclectic stimuli

When we’re under pressure, as we all are now, we tend to focus on our own sector, our own organisation or even our own department. But many of the biggest commercial ideas actually come from elsewhere. In Go Luck Yourself, I talk about business ‘ecosystems’ to illustrate this point.

The four biggest brands in the world, Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft, all use this model nowadays. But the inventor of the idea, James F. Moore, originally borrowed it from Mother Nature. Just goes to show; sometimes, a walk in the Great Outdoors can be more helpful than another hour at your desk.

Draw from diverse teams

Finally, we all know the moral arguments for diversity, equality and inclusion. But there’s also a hard commercial imperative. There is now a huge body of evidence that shows creativity increases when people with different experiences and perspectives contribute to the brief. For instance, the fact that the BioNTech was developed by German citizens, born to Turkish immigrants, is no fluke; immigrants are massively over-represented in the lists of Nobel prize winners. OK, so our own work is unlikely to lead to one of those, but we can greatly improve our chances of success by making sure we’re not operating in a bubble.

To return to Wiseman’s experiment, many of us probably feel a bit like his ‘unlucky’ respondents right now. We’re slogging away at the task in hand, with our heads down, possibly feeling a little sorry for ourselves. But you can be sure there are opportunities in the world around us, that we are currently missing. They might not always be as obvious as an advert; in fact, we shouldn’t bury ourselves in those all day.  But they are out there if we look hard enough.

So, stop reading this. Go for a walk. Open your eyes. And Go Luck Yourself.

Go Luck Yourself by Andy Nairn will be released on 8th June 2021.