Serendipity and Culture

In vendor selection, I believe that things like corporate culture and attitude are very important.  Doing research about things like culture allows a firm to best take advantage of serendipity.  Serendipity can be incredibly important in business, but leaving success all to fortuitous events is a huge mistake.  The best way to go about things is to put your business in the right place to let luck take its course.

If a company chooses vendors by throwing a dart at a list, then there is a chance that the relationship could be successful.  But if they first go through and screen that list of venders and eliminate half, or two-thirds of the firms that would cause a culture clash, then there is a much greater likelihood that things will end up working out favorably.  At the end of the day, a dart will be determining the relationship, but because the majority of problem candidates will have been eliminated, the decision will end up being judged upon the extent of the relationship's success, and not whether it worked at all.