When I hear about theme park accidents, my first reaction is always: must have been a shadowy operation. The kind of rides for which the operators deserve the designee "carnies" -- the ones who pack up and disappear after a wild long weekend of cotton candy, elephant ears and brightly-colored rolls of tickets. Not Disney. No, not Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS)!

But the Magic Kingdom was a little less magic today as several visitors were injured on a water ride at Walt Disney World in Florida. Although they weren't hurt badly and it didn't seem a hugely structural problem -- the exit platform was faulty, said Disney -- it's nonetheless a shattering of my preconceptions: that Disney is in an entirely different category than those other guys, with their poorly-screened (or not screened at all) staff and their less-polished rides.

Disney stock had suffered a bit this evening, down 44 cents or 1.22% to $35.59 on the day, then down another 12 cents in after-hours trading despite strong Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End numbers. Will there be more damage before the week is out, or is this a temporary setback? The appearance of the phrase "Disney accident" on Google's Hot Trends ranking can't be great tidings.

I'm attending the 2006 Blogher Conference in San Jose, California, and many of the net femarati are here. I just finished listening to an enlightening talk by the co-founder of Blogger (now owned by Google), Meg Hourihan, and the co-founder of flickr (now owned by Yahoo!), Caterina Fake. Moderator Marnie Webb pointed out that both of the products for which the two speakers are famous, were accidental by-products of their respective companies' original mission.

Fake was working with her co-founders on a role-playing game, while Hourihan was working on project management software. Declaring the concept of a stealth period "dead," the flickr co-founder mentioned that user feedback was central in determining how the photo sharing software would be shaped; and Hourihan echoed that sentiment with regards to the very useful blogging software her company, Pyra, developed just for fun. "If we had started out to create a photo sharing site, it never would have happened," said Fake. "We would have done market research, and discovered that all the money was in on-demand printing, and that took too much capital investment, and we'd never make money. We would have decided it wasn't worth it."

It's quite an interesting detail of product history and it's amazing to think how many great, world-changing products were accidental. What's more, it's worth considering from a management strategy point of view: how does a company encourage its employees to invest time in offshoots of the central strategy, and then fail to analyze those happy accidents to death? Are big companies forever destined to buy these providential mistakes simply because they never would have made sense, had they been "product developed"? Even Google, king of the entrepreneurial, "throw it up against the wall and see what sticks" spirit, had to buy Blogger. Which companies are best positioned to find and care for accidental successes?