Experimentation:

Opportunity-driven Growth

Rapid Experimentation or Beta Testing

Taking Small Steps in the Opportunity Pursuit to Gradually Build Understanding

A Method for Rapid Experimentation

Source: Changing Strategic Direction, Peter Skat-Rørdam

Experimentation should be based on a common sense: taking the first step; learning; taking corrective action; taking the next step; and so on. The starting point for experimentation is to plan the first actionable step.

Don't suffocate opportunities by subjecting them to bureaucratic approval procedures and planning demands. "It is not fruitful to begin opportunity experimentation by drafting a business plan. This is, in any event, impossible in any meaningful sense when a project leads into the unknown. Nevertheless, healthy thinking about how to get started is useful. The process could begin with a brainstorming session, listing potential experimental activities. For example, the team could write a short paper outlining the results of an opportunity-visualization exercise, any proposed initial action, and the resources required. The purpose in all this is to gain experience necessary to support the validity of the opportunity."

The Art of Innovation: 9 Truths

By: Guy Kawasaki

1. Jump to the next curve. Too many companies duke it out on the same curve. If they were daisy wheel printer companies, they think innovation means adding Helvetica in 24 points. Instead, they should invent laser printing. True innovation happens when a company jumps to the next curve – or better still, invents the next curve, so set your goals high... More

DOs and DON'Ts of a Successful Innovator

By: Peter Drucker

DOs

Start small – try to do one specific thing...

DON'Ts

Don't undershoot, or you will simply create an opportunity for competition... More

The Jazz of Innovation

The improvisation-driven model for innovation project management doesn’t discard structure, just as there is a clear structure to good jazz. In innovation, this structure is created through roadmaps, guiding principles, business processes, systems and organizational charts. Strategic-planning and road-mapping processes cannot guarantee brilliant flashes of creative insight, but they can prepare minds and increase the odds that such flashes occur in real time. Thus structure, as chords do in jazz, serves as a basis for improvisation, experimentations, discoveries and innovation... More

Apply the 80/20 Rule

The 80/20 principle states that 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts and activities and that the progress means moving resources from low-value to high-value uses. Look through your list of opportunities and circle the 20% that will yield 80% of the results you are looking for.

Prototyping

"Quick prototyping is about acting before you've got the answers, about taking chances, stumbling a little, but then making it right. Living, moving prototypes can help shape your ideas. When you're creating something new to the world, you can't look over your shoulder to see what your competitors are doing; you have to find another source of inspiration," says Tom Kelly¹ from IDEO... More