Chance encounters

How can physician executives change their thinking and expand their understanding? Chance encounters offer a way to draw on others' unique experiences and patterns of thought unknown to us and have our usual way of thinking challenged and sometimes shattered--one of life's most powerful experiences. After reflecting on three optimal personal learning experiences from a recent conference, the author determines that the only common thread is the interdisciplinary thoughts expressed by a passionately involved individual whose approach to the problem is completely different from his own. These conferences offer the inquisitive physician entrepreneur the opportunity to hear how venture capitalists, population geneticists, business development experts, biotech CEOs, and big pharma scientists view the potential of the sequencing of the human genome to change medicine. Being able to see the world in a new way, the author concludes, is tied to the essence of entrepreneurship and the essence of joyful living.