Unlike myself 5 to 10 years ago, I'm fascinated by the intersection of failure and innovation. The biggest shortcoming I've seen in product development organizations during this time is a reluctance to fail, which in turn results in too little experimentation and thus too little innovation.
The solution is both cultural and technical: cultural, because blamelessness is part of unleashing the willingness to experiment when frequent failure is a given; technical, because a willingness to experiment doesn't help if you don't have, or can't build a platform for experimentation. I get the theory -- A/B testing, multivariate testing, etc. -- but engineering a platform to facilitate rapid experimentation still seems hard. That's a topic I'd love to hear more about.
On a side note, thanks for giving a shout-out to "Letters from an American". I've been a paid subscriber of hers for years, and while I don't always agree with her, she is always thoughtful and I've learned a lot about American history from her writings.
Thanks for the comment Mark. I completely agree with your comment "reluctance to fail, which in turn results in too little experimentation and thus too little innovation."
Unlike myself 5 to 10 years ago, I'm fascinated by the intersection of failure and innovation. The biggest shortcoming I've seen in product development organizations during this time is a reluctance to fail, which in turn results in too little experimentation and thus too little innovation.
The solution is both cultural and technical: cultural, because blamelessness is part of unleashing the willingness to experiment when frequent failure is a given; technical, because a willingness to experiment doesn't help if you don't have, or can't build a platform for experimentation. I get the theory -- A/B testing, multivariate testing, etc. -- but engineering a platform to facilitate rapid experimentation still seems hard. That's a topic I'd love to hear more about.
On a side note, thanks for giving a shout-out to "Letters from an American". I've been a paid subscriber of hers for years, and while I don't always agree with her, she is always thoughtful and I've learned a lot about American history from her writings.
Thanks for the comment Mark. I completely agree with your comment "reluctance to fail, which in turn results in too little experimentation and thus too little innovation."