“The problem with these closed environments is that they inhibit serendipity and reduce the overall network of minds that can potentially engage with a problem. This is why a growing number of large organizations—businesses, nonprofits, schools, government agencies—have begun experimenting with work environments that encourage the architecture of serendipity. Traditionally, organizations that have a strong demand for innovation have created a kind of closed playpen for hunches: the research-and-development lab. Ironically, R&D labs have historically functioned as a kind of idea lockbox; the hunches evolving in those labs tended to be the most heavily guarded secrets in the entire organization. Allowing these early product ideas to circulate more widely would allow rival firms to copy or exploit them. Some organizations—including Apple—have gone to great length to keep R&D experiments sequestered from other employees inside the organization. But that secrecy, as we have seen, comes with great cost. Protecting ideas from copycats and competitors also protects them from other ideas that might improve them, might transform them from hints and hunches to true innovations.”