Once upon a time, there was an award-winning global reference model for collaborative working environments in Joensuu, Finland — a place called netWork Oasis.
It was a visionary reference model long before “coworking” became a buzzword. Its architecture encouraged chance encounters, its culture fostered curiosity, and its design supported communities to flourish. It wasn’t just a workplace; it was a framework and stage for serendipity to emerge. It was a real-world prototype of what I later came to call Smile in Mind organisation model.
And then, one day, a King without Jesters arrived.
Within months, his ego dismantled what had taken years to build. A tragic example of how destructive the “Not Invented by Myself” attitude can become.
The result was silence. The lights dimmed.
Every lost idea is a silent tragedy.
The downfall of netWork Oasis was not caused by money or market forces. It was a failure of mindset — the ‘King’s inability to see value in ideas that didn’t originate from his own authority. That’s how innovation dies: not with a bang, but with a shrug of arrogance. A concrete example of serendipity lost. Yes, this is the invitation for serendipity scholars, I can showcase a great example of “serendipity lost” – a research topic you so eagerly are looking for.
I’ve come to call this the Dump King Syndrome — the modern counterpart of those medieval rulers who surrounded themselves with flatterers and silenced the jesters who dared to laugh at power. They believed they didn’t need jesters. History proved them wrong. Their kingdoms never flourished.
In the absence of jesters, reality stopped speaking truth to power. Laughter disappeared — and with it, wisdom.
What If… a 21st Century Jester Had Been There?
Sometimes I ask myself: What if a 21st Century Jester had already existed back then? Someone fearless enough to stand beside that ‘King’ and mirror his blind spots. Someone playful enough to make vision and the fact audible through humor, not confrontation.
Someone skilled enough to convince the ‘King’ that also other people can have great ideas, that a 18 month conceptual planning with a huge budget and a team with the best global-level experts in various domains could produce something valuable.
Could netWork Oasis have survived?
Could it have evolved, rather than been erased?
We’ll never know. But I suspect the answer is yes.
Because when a Jester enters the room, stagnation loses its grip. The Jester doesn’t impose truth — he creates the conditions where others discover it. And that’s precisely what the King without Jesters could never understand.
This photo still stings. An empty corridor once alive with voices, laughter, and ideas. Look closely and you can almost feel the afterglow of what once was: the rhythm of conversations, the spark of connection, the hum of collaboration. Now it stands as a silent monument — a reminder of what happens when curiosity is replaced by control.
Architecture remains, but the soul has left. This means that salient issues start to dominate, relevant issues lose their importance.
Paradoxically, that collapse became the fertile soil for the next chapter in my journey! The frustration, the disbelief, the loss — they all incubated something new. However it took 20 years for me to get all this documented in my forthcoming book Serendipity Unleashed – Hidden Wisdom of the Jesters, out November 2025. It will be published by a Californian publishing house for worldwide distribution in main delivery channels. But this twenty years was the time well spend, now I am able to help organisations suffering from “Dump King Syndrome”.
From my netWork Oasis journey I have found vision and encourage to create Smile in Mind framework, the theory of Serendipity Management, the prediction of the upcoming paradigm shift – the emergence of the Postnormal Era – and finally the conviction that jesters are essential for collective intelligence in our unpredictable VUCA times!
There is also a broader lesson learnt in this Joensuu science park- case. Ego might be efficient in the short term, but humility builds legacies. Every organisation needs its jesters — people who can question, connect, and reframe without fear. The moment leaders think they can manage complexity with roadmaps alone, serendipity withers. If netWork Oasis had a Jester back then, perhaps the story would have ended differently.
But the spirit of the Oasis lives on — not in the building, not in Joensuu anymore, but in every conversation, idea, and person who carries its lessons forward.
So, when the next “King without Jesters” appears in your organisation, ask yourself:
Who dares to laugh? Who dares to question? How do we avoid “Dump King Syndrome”.
Because without jesters, every Oasis will eventually turn into a desert.
