Relativity — on the role of chance, where you start, and who you meet along the way

Blog 2 of 10 | On the sixth chapter of Lessons Learned from ASML

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Last week, we concluded with the observation that ASML's trajectory can be well explained in hindsight, but that the success was not as inevitable as we might now assume. This chapter zooms in further on that gap between the explanatory logic and the reality of how things actually unfolded. While many management books explain how good management and leadership contribute to organizational success, here we explain the success based on factors that lay (entirely) outside ASML's sphere of influence.

The Escher print we selected for this blog is Relativity from 1953. Figures move through the same architecture, but each in their own gravitational field. They cross the same stairs, pass the same arches, but see the space completely differently. Who you are and where you start determines which route you see; but it also determines who you encounter, what happens to coincide, and what connections are formed that no one had foreseen. That image fits the questions we ask in this chapter.

Who you are and where you start determines the route you see; but it also determines who you meet, what happens to coincide, and what connections are formed that no one had foreseen.

The unpublished manuscript of Chance and Necessity

Gjalt Smit, ASML's first CEO, wrote a manuscript about the company's early years after his active tenure that was never published. He titled it Chance and Necessity, after the work of the same name by biologist and Nobel laureate Jacques Monod. Monod argued that random, unplanned events underlie every breakthrough and that necessity, the structured response to them, transforms them into something lasting. Smit recognized that pattern in his own experience. He referred to the major unexpected twists in early ASML as 'acts of God' . Not to diminish the companies' own contribution, but because he knew that a number of the major plot twists lay far beyond its own sphere of influence.

The role of chance, luck, and serendipity is being taken increasingly seriously in management literature as explanatory factors for strategic success, although practice, as usual, has been ahead of this notion for much longer. The tendency to construct a strategy in hindsight that neatly explains why something worked remains persistent. Anyone who takes a close look at the history of organizations that have achieved something extraordinary will see that luck and misfortune play a more substantial role than we usually admit. We do not cite it as the sole explanation for success or as an excuse for failure, but as a factor that deserves to be taken just as seriously, just like the quality of management and leadership.

He called the major unexpected twists in early ASML 'acts of God'. Not to belittle his own role, but because he knew that a number of the major plot twists lay far beyond his own sphere of influence.

Three concepts that describe something fundamentally different

Chance is the unexpected event itself; it is neither intended nor designed. Luck (or misfortune) is how that event falls upon you, which depends on where you stand at that moment and what you have already built up. Serendipity is the third concept, and the most useful in practice: the ability to recognize the unexpected and make something of it, because you were prepared to see what there was to see. Three closely related concepts that are regularly lumped together under the umbrella of luck or coincidence, yet each describes something fundamentally different. But which also each require a different management response.

The map that draws the playing field

One of the most striking passages in this chapter is not about internal decisions, but about the geopolitical constellation in which ASML was able to grow. Not the recent discussions about export restrictions and EUV—which are the subject of other books—but the slow, less visible structures that had already drawn the map before ASML had sold a single machine.

ASML started in a world where the tension between America and Japan over trade policy and market share in the semiconductor industry was all-determining. Who you were, and where you came from, within that power dynamic—trusted or suspect, neutral or burdened—determined which paths were passable and who had an interest in collaborating with you. In that context, a relatively small Dutch company, far from the centers, proved to be an unexpectedly useful partner for organizations seeking a non-Japanese alternative, or those who preferred to do business with someone outside the trade political front lines. No one in Veldhoven had any influence on how that context came about. But the map was already laid out, and who you encountered along the way, and which doors opened, was partly determined by it.

From fluke to structural response

Using a number of concrete ASML episodes — which we won't reveal here yet, but which range from a travel ban during the Gulf War that nearly cost an existential contract, to a forgotten design choice that years later proved to be the key to a major technological lead — we show how arbitrary circumstances were transformed into lasting strengths.

But the chapter does not stop there. The central question is not only what happened by chance, but how ASML as an organization was structured to make something of that chance. What the episodes have in common is a structural response: an organization that was lightly built, modular in design, and that shared information quickly across internal and external boundaries. This made it possible to absorb the unexpected and act on it before the window closed. It turned out to be the organizational characteristics that determined whether a random event remained a danger or became a springboard.

“Chance rolls the dice. But Necessity — the structured, prepared response — determines what is made of the outcome.”

Next week: how we use theoretical lenses to lift the ASML story beyond the boundaries of a single company — and thereby sharpen your own perspective on innovation under uncertain circumstances.

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