Serendipity: Serendipity is the act of finding something when you may not be looking for it. This is quite common and everyone has experienced it at least once in their life. The simplest example would be internet browsing. You may on the internet looking for something and experience serendipity by finding something else that you were not originally looking for. Another example of serendipity would be the invention of the microwave oven.
Error: A lot of innovations have occurred through mistakes. As humans, we are prone to make mistakes but that doesn’t mean good things do not come out of these mistakes. Apart from learning from them, new innovations could result from them. Some examples of innovations that have come out of mistakes are penicillin or the pacemaker. Penicillin was discovered only after Alexander Fleming was working to create a cure for diseases but realized that a dish was left uncovered from a previous experiment had grown mold that killed the bacterium. The pacemaker was created by Wilson Greatbatch when he installed the wrong resistor in his attempt to finish the circuit of a device that would record a heartbeat.
Exaptation: Exapatiation can be thought of as an evolutionary process. The idea is to repurpose something to be used for something else other than their original task. We see a lot of this in the field of medicine. Many drugs that may have been developed were originally intended for a specific purpose may now be used for something completely different. One innovation was Coca Cola. Coca Cola was originally created to treat morphine addiction, headaches, and anxiety. Originally it was a sweet alcoholic drink mixed with a few coca leaves. It was later adjusted to be carbonated and evolved into the drink we have today. Listerine is another example, originally it was used as a surgical sterilizer and antiseptic. It later became the mouth wash we have now.
References
Harris, W. (2011, March 3). 10 new uses for old inventions. HowStuffWorks. https://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/repurposed-inventions/10-new-uses-for-old-inventions.htm
Rouse, M. (2006, December 24). What is serendipity? – Definition from WhatIs.com. WhatIs.com. https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/serendipity
Kevin Tepas 