Formalize the Experiment: How a Disciplined Learning Process Optimizes the Success of an Innovation Initiative

By: Chris Trimble and Vijay Govindarajan

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Synopsis: Innovation initiatives require a far different approach from that of ongoing operations. Unfortunately, most companies-and their leaders-don't draw enough of a distinction between the two. In managing ongoing operations, leaders strive for performance discipline. For innovation initiatives, however, they ought to strive for disciplined experimentation. Indeed, all innovation initiatives, regardless of size, duration, or purpose, are, in essence, experiments. In this chapter, the authors give an overview of the key steps required to formalize a disciplined experiment. They then present ten principles for disciplined experimentation, each of which diverges sharply from standard practices for ongoing operations. Using examples from Thomson Corporation and Infosys, they stress the importance of learning-defined as the process of turning speculative predictions into reliable ones. This chapter was originally published as Chapter 4 of "The Other Side of Innovation: Solving the Execution Challenge."