Cambridge Business Association
The Experimentation Field Book
Book

The Experimentation Field Book

A Step-by-Step Project Guide

Jeanne Liedtka, Natalie Foley, Elizabeth Chen and David Kester
Columbia Business School Publishing, 2024
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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Applicable
  • Well Structured
  • Concrete Examples

Recommendation

Is your new idea for a product or service worth pursuing? To find out, treat your idea like a hypothesis and test it with an experiment. In this concise and practical guide to the experimentation process, a star team of educators and consultants outline the five steps necessary to turn testable ideas into profitable realities. Grounded in the real stories of four organizations, the team explains how to make an idea testable, how to design the actual test, and what to do with the results that follow. Come prepared with an idea to work with, and this field book will guide you toward success.

Summary

Use experiments to test if new ideas are likely to succeed. 

Experimentation helps bridge the gap between imagining an idea and making it a reality. The data you collect from the experimentation process builds up an evidence base that lets you know whether to launch a new product or service and how to do it. Experimenting mitigates risk in a dynamic world, allowing you to address known unknowns — things you know you don’t know — and discover unknown unknowns — things you don’t know you don’t know.

Unfortunately, experiments are underused when launching new product or service solutions. All too often, they get overlooked as organizations go full steam ahead with the mantra of “just build it, and they will come.” However, if you build your product or service and the customers don’t come, you waste a lot of resources. Experiments help you avoid that waste. They protect you from overspending on unwanted solutions, allow you to test many ideas to see what scales, and connect you with early adopters to guide future development.

In addition to being underused, experiments are...

About the Authors

Jeanne Liedtka is a management professor at Darden Graduate School of Business who specializes in inclusive strategies and corporate innovation. Elizabeth Chen is an associate professor at UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health who specializes in human-centered design in public health training. David Kester founded the strategic design consultancy DK&A, and the executive training school Design Thinkers Academy London. Natalie Foley is a team leader at the start-up social enterprise Opportunity@Work, and was the former CEO of the consulting firm Peer Insight.

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