business experimentation

We all know experiments work – after all, this is how we got the IPhone, the planes and the vaccines. Yet, Stefan H. Thomke brings experimenting to a whole new level. His heavily-researched book (“Experimentation Works”) looks in-depth at how the businesses can create, develop and adjust their business models without committing too many resources in advance.

“Experimentation Works” is a book about a book – it looks at how a for-profit organization can re-arrange its activities so that they extract maximum value from pre-launching them. Thomke attempts to apply the classical scientific method in research to new business problems. The approach in itself is centuries old – and has been heavily popularized by Karl Popper in his 20^th century scientific methods famous book. Yet, so far the method has failed to make substantial inroads in the mainstream business – and this is where Thomke tries to make a serious point about it.

The main issue with experimentation in business remains the risk aversion. Thomke warns that many organizations are reluctant to fund “uncertain-results” experiments – and this creates long-term serious development issues. If a business fails to experiment, it actually fails on a large extent to innovate. And if a business fails to innovate, it will slowly fall behind its competition – which becomes a kind of a downwards spiral.Read More »“Experimentation Works” by Stefan H. Thomke – A Harvard Business Review Press Book Essentials