Introducing serendipity in a social network model of knowledge diffusion

• Serendipity as a control mechanism for knowledge diffusion in social network.
• Local communication enhanced in the periphery of a network.
• Prevalence of hub nodes in the network core mitigated.
• Potential disruptive effect on network formation of uncontrolled serendipity.

In this paper, we study serendipity as a possible strategy to control the behavior of an agent-based network model of knowledge diffusion. The idea of considering serendipity in a strategic way has been first explored in Network Learning and Information Seeking studies. After presenting the major contributions of serendipity studies to digital environments, we discuss the extension to our model: Agents are enriched with random topics for establishing new communication according to different strategies. The results show how important network properties could be influenced, like reducing the prevalence of hubs in the network’s core and increasing local communication in the periphery, similar to the effects of more traditional self-organization methods. Therefore, from this initial study, when serendipity is opportunistically directed, it appears to behave as an effective and applicable approach to social network control.