Making Experimentation Work For You
You have said that every organization should embrace the practice of continuous experimentation. Why is this so critical, particularly right now?
The main reason is that experimentation is the engine of innovation. As a result, anyone who cares about innovation must also care about experimentation. Innovation is about novelty and value creation, but it is equally about uncertainty. There can be R&D uncertainty, production uncertainty, market uncertainty, customer experience uncertainty, to name a few. We typically deal with the uncertainty element by relying on our experience. But that can be quite limiting. The fact is, when you’re trying to create something new, in most cases you don’t have any prior experience with it.
Some might say, ‘In that case, look to the data’. But again, the same problem arises: If something is going to be novel, by definition, there is not much data around it. That leaves us with the notion of experimentation, which allows us to test what works and what doesn’t.
Like everything else, experimentation is changing. There are companies out there running
