Mark: Alright Michelle, quick question. If you had to describe your relationship with 'surprise,' would it be a passionate love affair or more like a restraining order? Michelle: Oh, definitely a restraining order. My calendar has a calendar. I like my life predictable, thank you very much. Unpredictability is just chaos wearing a party hat. Mark: I think a lot of people feel that way. We build these perfectly curated, optimized lives, and then surprise comes along and just messes everything up. But what if that chaos is exactly what we need? Michelle: I'm skeptical. My anxiety levels just spiked hearing you say that. What are you getting at? Mark: I’m getting at a fascinating book called Surprise: Embrace the Unpredictable and Engineer the Unexpected by Tania Luna and LeeAnn Renninger. And what's wild is that one of the authors, Tania Luna, was apparently just like you—a self-proclaimed control freak. Michelle: Wait, really? A fellow spreadsheet enthusiast? Mark: Absolutely. She planned her entire life out. But then she did something completely paradoxical: she co-founded a company called Surprise Industries, which literally orchestrates surprise experiences for people. The book is basically her journey of confronting that deep-seated fear of the unknown. Michelle: Okay, so a control freak started a surprise company? That's the first surprise right there. I’m intrigued. It feels like a psychologist opening a casino to study addiction. Mark: Exactly! And it gets to the heart of this paradox we all live with. We say we want stability, but a life without any surprises is, well, incredibly boring and stagnant. The authors argue it’s not just boring, it’s neurologically detrimental.

Michelle: Detrimental? That’s a strong word. How can predictability, which feels so safe, be bad for us? Mark: Because our brains are fundamentally prediction machines. They build a model of the world based on past experiences to keep us safe. ‘Fire is hot, don’t touch.’ ‘That bus runs at 8:05, be there on time.’ When the world matches our predictions, our brain gets a little hit of satisfaction and moves on. It's efficient. Michelle: Right, that sounds like a good system. It saves energy. Mark: It does. But learning, growth, and even joy happen when that system is broken. When something unexpected occurs, our brain goes into high alert. Neuroscientists call this a 'prediction error.' Suddenly, a huge surge of dopamine is released—not just for good surprises, but for any surprise. It’s the brain’s way of screaming, "Pay attention! This is important! You need to update your map of the world!" Michelle: Huh. So that jolt I feel when I see an unexpected charge on my credit card is… dopamine? It doesn't feel very joyful. Mark: It's the same chemical messenger! The book breaks this down into what they call the 'Surprise Sequence.' It starts with Freeze. For a split second, everything stops. Your brain halts all other processes to figure out what’s happening. Michelle: I know that feeling. It’s the deer-in-the-headlights moment. Mark: Precisely. Then comes Find. Your brain frantically searches for an explanation. ‘Is this a threat? Is this an opportunity? What does this mean?’ This is where you get that intense focus. After that comes Shift, where you adjust your perspective based on the new information. And finally, Share. We are biologically wired to tell other people about surprising events. It’s how we process them and strengthen social bonds. Michelle: Okay, the brain science is cool, I get it. But in the real world, most surprises feel negative. A surprise bill, a surprise illness, a surprise deadline from your boss. Why on earth would we want to invite more of that into our lives? Mark: That’s the core of the issue. The authors argue we’ve become so averse to the possibility of a bad surprise that we’ve built walls to keep out all surprises. Tania Luna, the author, talks about how she used to track her emotions in a spreadsheet to ensure she was hitting her ‘happiness targets.’ She was trying to eliminate emotional risk. Michelle: I’m not going to lie, a part of me thinks that sounds kind of brilliant. Terrifying, but brilliant. Mark: But she realized something profound. In her words, "By keeping out the bad surprises, I stopped letting in the good ones." She was living a flat-line life. Emotionally safe, but also numb. By avoiding the valleys, she was also cutting off the peaks. The unexpected compliment, the spontaneous trip, the accidental discovery—all of it was being filtered out by her need for control. Michelle: Wow. When you put it like that, it’s a bit of a wake-up call. You can't selectively numb emotions. If you shut down your ability to feel the bad, you shut down your ability to feel the good, too. Mark: And that fear of the bad surprise is what leads to some of the biggest failures, not just in our personal lives, but in the entire history of business.

Michelle: Okay, you have my attention. You’re saying the fear of surprise can actually cause the very failure we’re trying to avoid? Mark: It's the perfect setup for a corporate tragedy. And there’s no better example than the story of Kodak. Everyone knows Kodak. For a century, they were photography. If you took a picture, it was probably on Kodak film. Michelle: My entire childhood is documented in those little yellow and red boxes. They were invincible. Mark: You'd think so. But in 1975, a young Kodak engineer named Steve Sasson invented something revolutionary: the first-ever digital camera. It was the size of a toaster, took 23 seconds to capture a grainy black-and-white image, but it was the future. He presented it to the Kodak executives. Michelle: And they must have been thrilled, right? They had a massive head start on the entire industry. Mark: They were horrified. Their reaction, according to Sasson, was basically, "That's cute, but don't tell anyone about it." They saw this incredible, surprising invention not as an opportunity, but as a direct threat. Their entire business model was built on selling film and chemicals and paper. Digital photography required none of that. It would cannibalize their core business. Michelle: So they buried it. Out of fear. Mark: They buried it. They were so afraid of the surprise, so resistant to this unpredictable shift in technology, that they actively suppressed it. They spent the next two decades doubling down on film, even as competitors like Sony and Canon raced ahead with digital. By the time Kodak finally tried to catch up, it was too late. In 2012, the company that invented the digital camera filed for bankruptcy. They were destroyed by a surprise they saw coming 30 years in advance. Michelle: That is absolutely heartbreaking. It’s a story about technology, but it’s really about fear. They saw the future as a threat instead of an invitation. Mark: Exactly. They failed to embrace unpredictability. Now, let’s flip that. What does it look like when a company gets it right? Let's talk about 3M and the Post-it Note. Michelle: Ah, the happy accident story! I love this one. Mark: It’s the perfect counterpoint. In the late 1960s, a 3M scientist named Spencer Silver was trying to create a super-strong adhesive for the aerospace industry. Instead, he accidentally created the opposite: a ridiculously weak one. It was sticky, but you could peel it off easily without leaving a residue. By all metrics, it was a complete failure. Michelle: A bad surprise. His experiment didn't work. Mark: A total failure. He tried to find a use for it for years, with no luck. It became known as "the solution without a problem." But Silver didn't throw it away. He kept talking about it. Years later, another 3M employee, Art Fry, was singing in his church choir. He used little slips of paper to mark the hymns in his book, but they kept falling out. Michelle: I can see where this is going. Mark: During a sermon, he had his "eureka" moment. He remembered Silver's "failed" adhesive. What if he could coat his bookmarks with it? They would stick to the page but peel off without tearing it. He went back to the lab, and the Post-it Note was born. Michelle: So Kodak saw a world-changing invention as a threat and buried it. Art Fry saw a failed glue as a solution to a minor annoyance and created a billion-dollar product. It really is all about mindset. Mark: It’s the difference between seeing a surprise as a problem to be eliminated versus an unexpected piece of information to be explored. The book calls this "Practice Skillful Not-Knowing." It’s not about being ignorant; it’s about being comfortable with ambiguity and open to the idea that a "failure" might be a success in disguise. Michelle: That’s a great phrase, "Skillful Not-Knowing." It implies that being open to uncertainty is a skill you can develop, not just a personality trait. But how? How do we build that resilience so we react more like Art Fry and less like the Kodak executives? Mark: The book offers a few tools. One is called "Make Struggle Sandwiches." When you’re facing a tough, unexpected challenge, you sandwich it between two things: a reminder of a past struggle you overcame, and a reminder of your current strengths and resources. It reframes the struggle from an overwhelming crisis into a manageable, temporary event.

Michelle: Okay, so we've talked about reacting to surprises, both good and bad. But the book's title is Engineer the Unexpected. Can you really create surprise on purpose? Isn't that a total contradiction? If you plan it, it's not a surprise. Mark: It sounds like a contradiction, but the authors argue you're not engineering the outcome, you're engineering the conditions for surprise to emerge. You're creating an environment where the unexpected is more likely to happen. And the masters of this are the design firm IDEO. Michelle: Oh, the design thinking people. They designed the first Apple mouse, right? Mark: That's them. Their entire process is built on engineered surprise. When they take on a project—say, redesigning a shopping cart—they don't just sit in a boardroom and brainstorm. They go out into the world. They watch people, they talk to them, they try to understand the user's experience from every possible angle. They call this the "empathy" phase. Michelle: They're looking for the unexpected insights. Mark: Exactly. They're looking for the surprising pain points and needs that customers can't even articulate. Then they move to rapid prototyping. They build dozens of cheap, ugly, weird versions of a solution. They encourage wild ideas. The goal isn't to get it right on the first try; the goal is to fail quickly and learn from the surprises that emerge. They are intentionally creating a system that generates unexpected data, which then leads to innovation. Michelle: I love that. It reframes failure as just another word for a surprising result. It’s not a moral failing; it’s just new information. Mark: And we can apply this to our own lives. It doesn't have to be a grand gesture. The book talks about how small, engineered surprises can create what they call 'delight.' And there's a fantastic real-world example of this: the Piano Staircase. Michelle: The Piano Staircase? What’s that? Mark: In Stockholm, there was a subway exit with a staircase right next to an escalator. Unsurprisingly, almost everyone took the escalator. It was the path of least resistance. So, as a social experiment, a team turned the entire staircase into a giant, playable piano. Each step you took played a different musical note. Michelle: No way. That’s amazing! Mark: Overnight, everything changed. People started choosing the stairs. They were laughing, hopping, creating little tunes. The data showed that 66% more people chose the stairs over the escalator than before. They took a mundane, routine choice and injected a tiny, delightful surprise. It completely changed people's behavior for the better. Michelle: That’s brilliant! It’s not about a huge, life-altering shock. It’s about finding a moment of routine and just twisting it slightly. The book calls this "burying a cookie," right? Hiding a small, unexpected positive moment in an otherwise normal experience. Mark: That's the perfect way to put it. It could be leaving a thank-you note for the mail carrier, putting a favorite snack in your partner's lunch bag, or even just taking a different route on your walk home to see something new. You are intentionally breaking a pattern to create a small moment of delight.

Mark: When you pull it all together, the book's message is both simple and profound. Our modern world pushes us towards optimization, predictability, and control. We schedule every minute, we track every metric, we try to eliminate all uncertainty. Michelle: We try to turn our lives into a perfect, efficient machine. Mark: But in doing so, we're starving our brains of the very thing they need to learn, to connect, and to feel joy. We're living in a state of what the authors call 'hypo-stress'—the stress of boredom and under-stimulation. Surprise isn't the enemy of a well-lived life; it's the punctuation mark that gives it meaning. Michelle: It’s the jolt that reminds us we're alive. It’s what makes a memory stick. I don't remember the thousand times I drove to work the same way, but I remember the one time I saw a deer on the side of the road. Mark: That's the whole point. The unexpected moments are what form the narrative of our lives. And the book's ultimate power is that it gives us permission to be less perfect, less planned, and a little more open to the beautiful chaos of it all. It reframes vulnerability not as a weakness, but as the doorway to connection and growth. Michelle: So the challenge for all of us, myself included, is to find one small way to break a pattern this week. Don't plan your lunch one day, talk to a stranger in the coffee line, take a different street on your commute. Mark: A small, deliberate act of 'skillful not-knowing.' See what happens. Michelle: We'd love to hear what you do. Let us know what small surprise you engineered for yourself or someone else. Join the conversation with the Aibrary community. It’s about finding those little piano staircases in our own lives. Mark: This is Aibrary, signing off.