The Incredible Power of Serendipity!

Book excerpt: How Serendipity Shaped the Lifeof Author Boyé Lafayette De MenteThis is the personal memoir of author Boyé Lafayette De Mente, the 4th of ten children born to poor parents in an isolated valley in the Ozark Hills of southeast Missouri, and raised during the Great Depression of the 1930s.He went on to have a remarkable life which he attributes to the incredible power of serendipity. As editor of The IMPORTER magazine in Tokyo in the late 1950s and early 1960s and as the author of numerous pioneer books on the mindset and business practices of the Chinese, Japanese and South Koreans he made major contributions to the initial rise of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and China as economic superpowers. He played a leading role in helping to launch the career of Thunderbird School of Global Management alumnae brother Merle Hinrichs who became the largest trade magazine publisher in Asia, a major financial donor to Thunderbird and member of the board of directors. And he launched the publishing career of Kentucky hillbilly Larry Flynt who achieved great wealth and notoriety as the publisher of HUSTLER magazine and champion of freedom of speech. [On the day De Mente met Flynt he told his wife that he had just met a 26-year old man who had the intelligence and drive to become president of the United States by the time he was old enough to qualify for the office.] De Mente's encounters and relationships with such extraordinary individuals as Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, America's ranking naval officer during World War II; Akio Morita, co-founder and leading light of what was to become the Sony empire; Toshio Karita, former protocol officer for the Imperial Family of Japan; and Daisetzu Suzuki, Japan's leading Zen master, plus many more, were experiences he could not have even dreamed about before they happened. His story is an example of the potential of ordinary individuals to achieve significant things when life presents opportunities and they follow up on them.