Testing Business Ideas: A Field Guide for Rapid Experimentation
David J. Bland and Alexander Osterwalder
Wiley (November 2019)

“Experimentation is the least arrogant method of gaining knowledge.”  Isaac Asimov

First of all, I wish to acknowledge the brilliant work of two designers, Alan Smith and Trish Papadakos. I share David J. Bland and Alexander Osterwalder’s high regard for their contributions of incalculable value.

This is one of the three volumes in the Strategyzer Series, the others being Business Model Generation and Value Proposition Design. My hope is to read and then review the other two but I wanted to absorb and digest the material in this volume first because breakthrough, high-impact ideas must be developed through a process of rapid experimentation before shifting focus on issues associated with a business model and value proposition design.

The potential power and value of experimentation in business would not be a surprise to anyone who has any experience with that process. For at least several thousand years, “success” in experimentation has achieved (if not exceeded) the desired results. Consider Odysseus’ development of a large wooden horse on the plains of Troy. More recently, Thomas Edison explained to a research assistant, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that don’t work.”

Bland and Osterwalder have created what they characterize as “a field guide for rapid experimentation.” They examine eight key stages of what should be an iterative, on-going process:

1. Learn how the testing process works
2. Design and run your first experiments
3. Reduce the risk (increase the prospects for success) of your business idea
4. Fine tune your testing process [for the given idea]
5. Bullet-proof your business ideas with stronger evidence than you’ve ever gathered before
6. Learn from experimentation ceremonies (see Pages 67-81)
7. Be able to share an extensive testing library with all your teams
8. Reduce risk and un certainty of new ideas across your organization

Their insights and counsel are guided and informed by three separate but interdependent influences: the scientific process, design thinking, and high-velocity incrementalism. In this context, two observations by Thomas Edison seem especially relevant: “Vision without execution is hallucination” and “The real measure of success is the number of experiments that can be crowded into twenty-four hours.”

If you are thinking about developing an experimentation culture — or now feel pressure to justify one that has been established —  I think you should keep in mind this observation by Richard Feynman: “It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn’t make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is. If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.”

Also keep in mind that the experimentation mindset and methodology are needed to test ideas that may have been validated before but may no longer be true or sufficient. That is, “unknown unknowns” to which Mark Twain once referred: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

I congratulate David Bland and Alexander Osterwalder on the abundance of valuable information, insights, and counsel that they provide. Their material can help almost any organization — whatever its size or nature may be — to build value for its customers and for its people. How?  By establishing a workplace culture within which innovative thinking generates and refines high-impact ideas.