This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "The Innovator’s DNA" by Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen, and Clayton Christensen. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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What’s the relationship between experimentation and innovation? Why is it useful to take things apart? How can you figure out what will work in the future?
In The Innovator’s DNA, Hal Gregersen, Jeff Dyer, and Clayton Christensen describe five behaviors and skills—what they call Discovery Skills—that are most likely to generate creative ideas. One of these is experimentation.
Read more to understand how experimentation in business is critical for innovation and to learn four ways to experiment with new ideas.
Experimentation and Innovation
One of the five Discovery Skills is experimentation. The authors discuss the connection between business experimentation and innovation, explaining that experimenting with potential solutions to business problems leads to new business ideas. When innovators take things apart and test their ideas with prototypes and pilot projects, they discover new possibilities for products and services. In essence, experimenting is searching for answers to your Defining Questions—it’s best for gathering data about ideas that might work in the future, while the Discovery Skills of questioning, observing, and idea networking provide data about the present and the past.
The authors highlight Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, as an innovator who uses experimentation to drive creativity and success. He embraces risk-taking and experimenting with new ideas, even if they initially seem unconventional or unlikely to succeed. The company itself was an experiment that Bezos conducted to test what products people would buy online. Amazon expanded exponentially by testing the limits of online retailer markets. Today, it continues to experiment with launching new products and services, such as Kindle, which are often met with initial skepticism but later became major contributors to the company’s success.
(Shortform note: Bezos’s propensity for experimentation fits within the character profile of successful business leaders Collins and Hansen outline in Great By Choice. Their research shows leaders of successful companies are generally devoted to their long-term goals and take actions based on experimentation and observations. However, based on their research, Collin and Hansen argue that risk-taking (one of Bezos’ other primary characteristics) is not required for business leaders’ success—you can take careful and calculated action based on your experimentation and observations.)
Techniques for Experimenting With Business Ideas
Keep an open mind. Fearlessly entertain new ideas, hold off on drawing premature conclusions, and test hypotheses as you go. As you do so, it’s important to remain open to being proven wrong and to plan for failed experiments—you’ll gather invaluable information no matter the outcome.
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Here's what you'll find in our full The Innovator’s DNA summary:
- The five key skills that are shared by the world's innovation leaders
- Why innovation in business is so important
- How to sustain innovative organizations and teams long term
