The hidden architecture of failure – understanding “zemblanity”

“Zemblanity”, or misfortune by design, offers a critical lens for understanding how human agency embeds fragility into systems, organisations and routines. Christian Busch examines the structural conditions that produce preventable failures, arguing that resilience depends not only on anticipating risk, but on actively dismantling the patterns that make bad luck inevitable.

On 7 January, a wildfire of catastrophic proportions swept through Los Angeles. Within hours, my home, my in-laws’ homes and thousands of others were gone, erased by a disaster fuelled not only by nature, but by overlooked risks and systemic failures. Years of deferred maintenance, rigid routines and absent accountability had quietly set the stage. Nature lit the match, but human choices and misplaced priorities determined the scale.

The COVID-19 personal protective equipment shortage was not only a logistics failure based on an unexpected event, but the outcome of years spent stripping away redundancy in the name of efficiency. Similarly, Boeing’s 737 MAX crisis was not a one-off technical glitch, it was (at hindsight) the predictable result of organisational structures, incentive systems, and decision pathways that gradually eroded safety margins.

In my research on serendipity (“making unexpected discoveries”), I have observed that many of the same conditions that produce lucky breakthroughs can also yield their harmful mirror image. This mirror image is zemblanity: bad luck by design.

What is zemblanity?

Novelist William Boyd coined the term as “the opposite of serendipity: making unhappy, unlucky and unexpected discoveries by design”. We define it as a patterned and preventable form of misfortune built into the way a system, organisation or individual operates. Zemblanity emerges when small, seemingly unrelated vulnerabilities connect and compound, producing failures that, often in hindsight, appear both foreseeable and avoidable.

It is not the same as blind bad luck, which comes from truly unforeseeable events, or good luck, which delivers positive outcomes without deliberate action. Like serendipity, zemblanity involves human agency, but here that agency hardwires fragility into the system. As shown in Figure 1, zemblanity sits in the quadrant where human agency produces negative value.

A simple example is the traveller who leaves for the airport with exactly the time required. A minor unforeseen traffic jam becomes a missed flight. The outcome is not just random; it is the predictable result of having no margin for unexpected events. In business, the stakes are higher. Napster locked itself into legal vulnerabilities by ignoring early warnings. Nokia and Blockbuster clung to outdated models despite clear market shifts. These were not one-off mistakes, they were the result of structural fragilities compounded by missed signals.

This makes zemblanity different from just “systemic risk” or “normalisation of deviance”. Those terms describe specific aspects of fragility, whereas zemblanity emphasises the active role of human agency in hardwiring that fragility into everyday routines. Like serendipity, it involves human action; but here, action magnifies vulnerability instead of opportunity. When such patterned vulnerabilities accumulate, they form what I call the zemblanity field: the negative opportunity space of latent vulnerabilities in which human choices, routines and structures amplify fragility and entrench preventable misfortune.

Why zemblanity is on the rise

Zemblanity is on the rise because today’s systems are increasingly interconnected, meaning that small flaws can have far-reaching effects. They are more optimised, stripping away slack and redundancy in the name of efficiency. And they operate in a world of heightened volatility, with climate shocks, AI-driven interdependencies and geopolitical disruptions becoming the norm. When efficiency outpaces resilience, even tiny cracks can trigger massive breakdowns.

Zemblanity usually creeps in quietly. Weak points go unnoticed until something breaks. Early decisions limit future options, small errors accumulate, and risky practices become “just how things are done”. These reinforcing loops operate everywhere. Individuals who chronically overcommit eventually burn out. Organisations that scale too quickly lock themselves into flawed ways of working; societies that postpone infrastructure investments find even minor shocks can cause catastrophic failures.

How to avoid zemblanity

Leaders can shrink the zemblanity field in several ways. For example, they can identify (parts of) it by mapping where human agency might produce negative value: spotting recurring near misses, tight margins, and unquestioned assumptions. Second, they can interrogate hidden interdependencies through reverse timeline thinking: assume a major breakdown has happened, then trace back to the overlooked links and “never happen” risks that made it inevitable.

Finally, they can convert vulnerability into opportunity by tuning systems, organisations or minds to surface positive surprises: encouraging cross-boundary connections, rewarding curiosity and preserving slack time for discovery. This shift not only reduces the likelihood of costly failures, it expands an organisation’s capacity for serendipity, the positive twin of zemblanity.

Moving towards active good luck

Not all setbacks are preventable, but much of what derails organisations is the direct result of design choices, and those choices can be changed. Reducing zemblanity is not merely a defensive move, it’s a way to protect resilience while preserving the capacity for serendipity. In a world where disruption is constant, those who dismantle bad luck by design will be best positioned not only to avoid costly failures, but to create their own good luck.

About the author

Christian Busch is an Associate Professor of Applied Management and Organisation at USC Marshall School of Business, California, and a Visiting Fellow at LSE. He’s the author of “Connect the Dots”.

Article source: The hidden architecture of failure – understanding “zemblanity”, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. This article represents the views of the author(s), not the position of LSE Business Review or the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Editor’s note: See also Heart of the problems with Boeing, Takata, & Toyota.

Header image source: Created by Bruce Boyes with Perchance AI Photo Generator.