A Plea for Greater Experimentation

In business, we dramatically underinvest in experimentation. Here’s why.

For a business idea to reach the marketplace, it must be conceived, shared, evaluated and launched.

The question is this: At which of these four stages, do great ideas die?

In other words, are we insufficiently creative (not enough ideas coming forth), insufficiently connected (not enough discussion of these ideas), insufficiently curious (not enough consideration given to the more idiosyncratic or counter-intuitive of these ideas), or insufficiently courageous (not enough risk taken in the final choice of which of the surviving ideas to implement)?

Consider this model: To bring a great idea to market, you need 10 ideas worth testing or prototyping; for this you need 100 ideas worth discussing and debating; and for this you need 1000 ideas to be invented and articulated. Thus, to bemoan a lack of entrepreneurial spirit within a company implies one or more choke points in this process.

We believe that it is at the third stage - experimentation, curiosity - that great ideas are most likely to drop out of the process.

Between discussion and execution, either we typically do not give ourselves license to test genuinely idiosyncratic ideas, or we test so few ideas (if any) that we feel impelled to play safe with those ideas that we end up testing. For fear of failure we discard all the ideas that in discussion proved to be too far-fetched to take seriously. Rather than allow a process of scientific experimentation to select the winning idea, we fall back on our intuition, fed by our fear, or shame, of failure.

So, instead of a process of 1000 > 100 > 10 > 1;

we now have something more like 1000 > 100 > 3 >1.

The fact is that the creative mind is much better at inventing ideas than evaluating them. Scientists acknowledge this. They invented experimentation – such as randomised controlled trails (RCTs) - as the remedy.

The beauty of experimentation is not only its objectivity, but just as important, it serves to liberate the creativity, curiosity and courage of managers.

Innovation in business should be about increasing the variance in the quality of the ideas submitted for testing rather than minimising the probability of failure at launch.

Our argument can perhaps be summarised best as follows: If, as a manager, you have just one shot at success, you’ll play safe.  You’ll sacrifice the chance of a stellar success simply to avoid the slightest chance of a failure, however small. But if you have 10 shots, you’ll allow yourselves at least two or three wild ideas on the off chance that one of these hits the jackpot.

Experimentation is the art of giving yourself 10 shots, not just one, whenever it comes to innovation.

This inspiring article was written by our highly regarded faculty member, Dr. Jules Goddard. To read more about Jules, click here