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Experimentation Works: The Surprising Power of Business Experiments Hardcover – February 18, 2020

by Stefan H. Thomke (Author)

172 ratings

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Don't fly blind. See how the power of experiments works for you.

When it comes to improving customer experiences, trying out new business models, or developing new products, even the most experienced managers often get it wrong. They discover that intuition, experience, and big data alone don't work. What does? Running disciplined business experiments. And what if companies roll out new products or introduce new customer experiences without running these experiments? They fly blind.

That's what Harvard Business School professor Stefan Thomke shows in this rigorously researched and eye-opening book. It guides you through best practices in business experimentation, illustrates how these practices work at leading companies, and answers some fundamental questions: What makes a good experiment? How do you test in online and brick-and-mortar businesses? In B2B and B2C? How do you build an experimentation culture? Also, best practice means running many experiments. Indeed, some hugely successful companies, such as Amazon, Booking.com, and Microsoft, run tens of thousands of controlled experiments annually, engaging millions of users. Thomke shows us how these and many other organizations prove that experimentation provides significant competitive advantage.

How can managers create this capability at their own companies? Essential is developing an experimentation organization that prizes the science of testing and puts the discipline of experimentation at the center of its innovation process. While it once took companies years to develop the tools for such large-scale experiments, advances in technology have put these tools at the fingertips of almost any business professional. By combining the power of software and the rigor of controlled experiments, today's managers can make better decisions, create magical customer experiences, and generate big financial returns.

Experimentation Works is your guidebook to a truly new way of thinking and innovating.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Named one of the "Top Ten Technology Books of 2020" by Forbes

Named one of the "Best Business Books 2020: Technology & Innovation" and the Top Shelf Pick by strategy+business

Named one of the "10 Best New Business Books of 2020" by Inc. magazine

"[Experiments] are a powerful tool for curious teams…" — Wall Street Journal

"[Offers new] ideas on what works in the digital experimentation world and it is all illuminating." -- Financial Times

"This is a thorough, encouraging guide for leaders looking for ways to encourage their teams to fail early and often in the service of ultimate success." -- Publisher's Weekly

Advance Praise for Experimentation Works:

"Experimentation Works is required reading for all leaders who want to know how companies like Amazon, Google, and Netflix win through fast-cycle scientific experiments―and how it can be done in their organizations. Making business decisions without experimentation is like bungee jumping without testing the cord. Yet far too many organizations still do this. With Thomke's clear explanations and examples, yours won't be one of them." -- Scott Cook, cofounder and Chairman of the Executive Committee, Intuit

"Stefan Thomke has written a marvelous book that's both thought provoking and highly informative. As CEO, I saw how his research on business experimentation can transform innovation cultures for the better. Experimentation does indeed work. I highly recommend the book." -- Marijn Dekkers, Chairman, Unilever

"Experimentation Works is a masterpiece and a must-read. Thomke, a top academic authority with deep practical insights, explains how low-cost business experiments can revolutionize the way firms design everything from business models to customer experiences. The book's ideas are very powerful, rigorous, and will change how you think about the science and practice of innovation management." -- Eric von Hippel, Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; author, Democratizing Innovation

"Stefan Thomke has written the definitive handbook for executives on how to build a high-impact experimentation capability. Experimentation Works is an amazing book with some sage advice: Experiment or perish. It's absolutely the right message at the right time in a world that has gone digital." -- Jay Larson, CEO, Optimizely

"Stefan Thomke has written a rare book, one that combines deep and original insights with great practical advice. Experimentation Works is about revolutionary changes in how innovation is managed, decisions are made, and organizations are led. Thomke shows us how business experiments fuel innovation and why companies must test at large scale to compete. The book is a landmark achievement." -- Anand Mahindra, Chairman, Mahindra Group

"In an increasingly digital world, CEOs need to drive large-scale scientific business experimentation. If they don't, their companies will die. Companies with strong experimentation systems and cultures will win every time. If you want to learn how this is done, you must read Experimentation Works. The book will change how you think about managing and decision making." -- Mark Okerstrom, President and CEO, Expedia Group

"Being an eﬀective leader today means acting with a sense of urgency: making many decisions quickly under great uncertainty. Experimentation Works describes a vital methodology--large-scale business experimentation--that takes the madness out of that equation and sets you and your organization up for success." -- Ajay Banga, President and CEO, Mastercard

"Business breakthroughs are achieved through the combination of great ideas and eﬀective implementation. Stefan Thomke's work, which I applied enthusiastically during my tenure as CEO, demonstrates that a process of disciplined experimentation is the best way to drive innovation and gain sustained competitive advantage." -- Gary Loveman, former Chairman and CEO, Caesars Entertainment Corporation

"Experimentation Works presents a very compelling case for how companies can leverage the scientiﬁc method to drive innovation and reinvent business models for sustainable growth. An immensely valuable guide for leaders of both B2C and B2B companies in an era of accelerating change and disruption." -- Loh Chin-Hua, CEO, Keppel Corporation

About the Author

Stefan H. Thomke, a leading authority on the management of innovation, is the William Barclay Harding Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He is the author of Experimentation Matters: Unlocking the Potential of New Technologies for Innovation (Harvard Business Review Press, 2003), as well as over one hundred articles, cases, and notes published in books and journals such as Harvard Business Review, Management Science, and MIT Sloan Management Review. Thomke has chaired numerous executive education programs, both at Harvard Business School and in companies around the world. He is a frequent conference speaker and adviser to global business leaders.

You can find the author at:
hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=6566
linkedin.com/in/stefan-thomke-innovation/

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harvard Business Review Press (February 18, 2020)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 163369710X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1633697102
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.12 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 1.25 x 9.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #237,559 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #36 in Business Structural Adjustment
- #56 in Organizational Change (Books)
- #162 in Business & Organizational Learning

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Stefan H. Thomke

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Stefan Thomke, an authority on the management of innovation, is the William Barclay Harding Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He has worked with firms on product, process, and technology development, customer experience design, operational improvement, organizational change, and innovation strategy.

Professor Thomke is a frequent conference speaker and advisor to global business leaders. He has taught and chaired executive education programs on innovation, R&D management, product & service development, and operations, both at Harvard Business School and in company programs around the world. He chairs the General Management Program (GMP) at HBS and has been a core faculty member of many executive education programs, including the Advanced Management Program (AMP), and the global Senior Executive Leadership Program (SELP) in Dubai, Mumbai, and Shanghai.

He also chairs Leading Product Innovation, which helps business leaders revamp their innovation systems for greater competitive advantage. He was faculty chair of HBS executive education and research in South Asia and has served on advisory and supervisory boards of start-up and established companies. Previously, Thomke was faculty chair of the MBA Required Curriculum and faculty co-chair of the doctoral program in Science, Technology and Management. He is the recipient of many awards, including the Apgar Award for Innovation in Teaching at HBS, a finalist for the Harvard Business Review McKinsey Award, and author of the bestselling article in MIT Sloan Management Review.

His research and writings have focused primarily on the process, economics, and management of business experimentation. He is a widely published author with more than one hundred articles, cases and notes published in books and leading journals, such as: California Management Review, European Business Review, Harvard Business Review, Management Science, Organization Science, Research Policy, Sloan Management Review, Strategic Management Journal and Scientific American. He is also author of the books Experimentation Matters: Unlocking the Potential of New Technologies for Innovation (Harvard Business School Press, 2003), Managing Product and Service Development (McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 2006), and Experimentation Works: The Surprising Power of Business Experiments (Harvard Business Review Press, 2020).

Professor Thomke holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering, Master’s degrees in Operations Research and Management (MBA equivalent), and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he was awarded a Lemelson-MIT doctoral fellowship for invention and innovation research. He has also received honorary degrees in Economics (Doctorate from the HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management) and Arts (Master’s from Harvard University).

Contact information: Harvard Business School, Soldiers Field, Morgan Hall 489, Boston, MA 02163 (U.S.A.); Telephone: +1 (617) 495-6569; E-mail: sthomke@hbs.edu.

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Customers find the book's experimentation approach transformative, describing it as a game changer. The book receives positive feedback for its readability, with one customer noting it's a must-read for modern executives.

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Experimentation power Reading quality

5 customers mention "Experimentation power"5 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's focus on experimentation, describing it as a game changer and highlighting its surprising power in business. One customer notes that companies need to test to innovate, while another emphasizes the importance of a good corporate culture of experimentation.

"...The book is amazing, it demonstrates that companies need to test to innovate, to find causality on product features or on new products and services,..." Read more

"...A good corporate culture of experimentation begins with the book remaining on the desk after reading for everyone to ask about the topic." Read more

"...author’s 2003 book “Experimentation Matters: Unlocking the Potential of New Technologies of Innovation“, where the author predicts the power of..." Read more

"Experimentation Works is a must read to help overcome inertia to change - a phenomenon all organizations experience to one degree or another...." Read more

4 customers mention "Reading quality"4 positive0 negative

Customers find the book great to read, with one noting it's a must-read for modern executives and another describing it as entertaining.

"...The book is amazing, it demonstrates that companies need to test to innovate, to find causality on product features or on new products and services,..." Read more

"...A good and even entertaining reading, excellent input...." Read more

"...Overall I found this to be a great guideline – a must-read for any business/organization thinking about implementing experimentation...." Read more

"Outstanding business insights. Must-read for modern execs" Read more

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Pedro Nuno Ferreira
“The surprising power of business experiments”
Reviewed in the United States on June 28, 2020
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I just finished reading the book “Experimentation Works” by Professor Stefan H. Thomke, I had the fortune, more the grace, of attending Professor Thomke’s classes at Harvard Business School “Driving Digital Strategy” and “Leading Product Innovation” programs. I witnessed his deep knowledge about open innovation and the “surprising power of business experiments” while studying the business cases that are also treated in his book, I also witnessed his amazing energy, pedagogy and natural kindness.
The book is amazing, it demonstrates that companies need to test to innovate, to find causality on product features or on new products and services, and that creativity and big data go along with testing in all the successful case studied.
It also shows that becoming an innovation by testing organizations is not for everyone and sometimes hard to replicate. Like people, companies need to be themselves when adapting to the testing world.
I greatly admire the author, which make me suspicious on my judgement, but the book is great and any leader, at any career lever, or any academic looking to getting better in innovation needs to read it.
The book is also, like the author, full of good humor, which makes it very nice to reed.

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3 people found this helpful

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Bernhard Fischer-Appelt
Experimentation is a a great and systematic aspect of culture
Reviewed in the United States on February 24, 2020
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Experimentation is the key to success for most platform-based companies like booking.com. In this book, such cases are explained in detail. Then there are those companies that experiment with technology and testing, but don't consider this a management approach or even an aspect of culture. Stefan Thomke emphasizes the role of experimentation as a scientific management method, which implies a wonderful cultural step forward.
A good and even entertaining reading, excellent input. A good corporate culture of experimentation begins with the book remaining on the desk after reading for everyone to ask about the topic.

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3 people found this helpful

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Andreas Aristidou
Want to implement experimentation inside your organization? This is for you!
Reviewed in the United States on April 4, 2020
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This book is a follow-up to the author’s 2003 book “Experimentation Matters: Unlocking the Potential of New Technologies of Innovation“, where the author predicts the power of strategic business experiments. This book serves to solidify his ideas and present numerous examples of how companies have been embracing experimentation and the benefits that experimentation has had.

Overall I found this to be a great guideline – a must-read for any business/organization thinking about implementing experimentation. The author takes us through countless examples of companies and organizations who have embraced an experimentation culture. Throughout those examples, he exposes readers to the hurdles and the benefits of becoming an experimentation organization. His vast experience in this area shines throughout the book.
While the book touches upon the math and statistics of experiments, it’s not the main purpose. The book is structured around several companies and high-level executives who have transformed their organizations to embrace experimentation. As such it looks at the big picture of experimentation rather than its technical details. In what follows I will attempt to summarize each chapter by discussing the key points, quotes and examples from each chapter.

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3 people found this helpful

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J H
Experimentation is a game changer for any oganization - Experimentation Works tells you how
Reviewed in the United States on May 15, 2020
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Experimentation Works is a must read to help overcome inertia to change - a phenomenon all organizations experience to one degree or another. Using his rigorous research of well-known companies, Stefan Thomke logically lays out how organizations can benefit from and build on continuous experimentation in many areas of business.

Building on nearly two decades of study that started with his first book Experimentation Matters, Experimentation Works offers ways for companies to test ideas in an efficient, organized manner that can drive sales and margins to new heights.

A brilliant and essential addition to your management toolkit!

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Chris Neumann
Blueprint for how to manage your website
Reviewed in the United States on April 8, 2020
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I run a company that conducts the experiments described in this book for 60+ companies, including many household names. After reading the book, I was very excited because we did not have to change our process at all, and it simply validated our approach. Our approach mirrors what the best run, most successful companies in the world (eg Facebook, Amazon, Apple, ebay, etc) have been doing for decades. By bringing data to a traditionally opinion-driven discipline, you end up building massive competitive advantages. Particularly in retail with the rise of companies that are solely direct to consumer, customer acquisition costs are the new "rent". In almost every case, experimentation is one of the highest ROI marketing activities, yet is not actually taken advantage of by most companies. The reason is it is pretty hard to execute on a real experimentation program, and it is a new way of doing business, hence the entire chapter at the end dedicated to overcoming common objections. At some point, every company that depends on their website to be an important part of their business will start experimenting if they want to survive since their customers will.

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7 people found this helpful

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Holger Tamm
Learn to be smarter by leveraging data
Reviewed in the United States on June 7, 2020
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Outstanding business insights. Must-read for modern execs

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Andrea S
Every CEO should read it (either from a big company or from a startup)
Reviewed in Mexico on December 10, 2020
Verified Purchase

Good balance between theory and examples
Guides you to form a experimental organization
Need more case studies from outside US organizations

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Woluwe Man
A Big Disappointment
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 4, 2020
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I ordered this book before it was even out, because I am a great believer in experimentation. What a disappointment the book turned out to be. I had to force myself to read the whole thing as it just lacked relevance for me as a non billion dollar corporation, non digital industry, non large research budget owner. And dare I say it, it was just a boring read
Examples were mostly from big corporations. The Food and Drink industry was not well represented. I don't know where all the praise for the book comes from - it didn't inspire or educate me. Sorry!

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Paulo Peres
Experimentar é diferente de tentativa e erro!
Reviewed in Brazil on January 11, 2021
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O livro é um bom exercício de forma técnica sobre como pensar, fazer e implementar a Experimentação dentro da empresa. É fortemente baseado no estudo do autor da empresa Booking.com, mostrando também muitos exemplos da Microsoft.

Um dos maiores ganhos que o autor nos entrega é a mudança de mentalidade que Testar / Experimentar nos traz: o incrementalismo é importante para a inovação! Testar sempre e de forma rigorosa e bem montada, traz sempre lucros. Small and continuous change! Tanto para uma empresa ambidestra ou não, experimentar (a experiência do cliente, backend e modelos de negócios) é importante para ganhar competitividade através de números (data-driven).

O livro poderia ter um toque de design com mais diagramas, mais esquemas visuais. Isto ajudaria o leitor a fixar a leitura mais tempo.

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Ernesto Martínez
Mala calidad
Reviewed in Mexico on September 30, 2020
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El libro llegó bastante maltratado de la pasta. Parece un libro de segundamano.

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Ernesto Martínez

Mala calidad

Reviewed in Mexico on September 30, 2020
El libro llegó bastante maltratado de la pasta. Parece un libro de segundamano.

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5.0 out of 5 stars “The surprising power of business experiments”

5.0 out of 5 stars Experimentation is a a great and systematic aspect of culture

4.0 out of 5 stars Want to implement experimentation inside your organization? This is for you!

5.0 out of 5 stars Experimentation is a game changer for any oganization - Experimentation Works tells you how

5.0 out of 5 stars Blueprint for how to manage your website

5.0 out of 5 stars Learn to be smarter by leveraging data

Top reviews from other countries

5.0 out of 5 stars Every CEO should read it (either from a big company or from a startup)

2.0 out of 5 stars A Big Disappointment

5.0 out of 5 stars Experimentar é diferente de tentativa e erro!

1.0 out of 5 stars Mala calidad

Mala calidad

Images in this review

“The surprising power of business experiments”

Experimentation is a a great and systematic aspect of culture

Want to implement experimentation inside your organization? This is for you!

Experimentation is a game changer for any oganization - Experimentation Works tells you how

Blueprint for how to manage your website

Learn to be smarter by leveraging data

Every CEO should read it (either from a big company or from a startup)

A Big Disappointment

Experimentar é diferente de tentativa e erro!

Mala calidad