The Science of Serendipity: How to Unlock the Promise of Innovation

About Matt Kingdon

Co-founder, co-chairman, and chief enthusiast at ?What If!

Matt Kingdon started ?What If! with Dave Allan in 1992. Their goal: to partner with clients who were enthused about innovation but stuck on how to make it happen.

?What If! has offices in three continents and partners with organisations across all sectors. In 2004 and 2005 ?WhatIf! won unprecedented, back-to-back first place finishes in the ‘UK's Best Small Workplaces’ awards run by the Great Place to Work Institute and the Financial Times.

Co-author of the best-selling innovation text Sticky Wisdom, Matt speaks frequently on the subject. ‘I've realised how useful it is to make goals tangible and how important it is to relentlessly engage everyone with the excitement and stretch of the journey’, he says. ‘We spend too much time at work for it to be predictable.’

Matt's core belief is that the key challenges facing organisations as they transform from sleepy giants to nimble innovators are more human than strategic. Listening, experimenting and packaging new ideas to survive the inevitable corporate beating – these skills, more so than ‘clever’ thinking and heavyweight documentation, are what separate innovation winners from innovation also-rans.

Prior to ?What If!, Matt worked with Unilever marketing its brand portfolio, first in the UK and then in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Matt lives in London with his family. His hobby is having cartilage removed from his knees following marathons he shouldn't ...