I read this in a story about Evan Williams - the founder of Blogger and Twitter:

1. Genuinly new ideas are accidentally stumbled upon - rather than sought out.

2. New ideas are by definition hard to explain to others - because words can express what is already known.

3. Good ideas seem obvious in retrospect.

This does sound familiar.

The story goes on to explain how Blogger was born when the team creating a complex software tool started to use a simple external diary. And similar aspects with Twitter - now moving to the next venture Obvious - aiming at orchestrating frequent accidents.

What does this really mean to business. Of course that you cannot plan or prognose the future. But you can be a more important part of it - if you busy yourself with being around new things - that is where the accidental innovations happen. If you are mentally prepared and have allocated decsion making power and some resources to those who move around, then your organization will be more agile.