Accelerating Learning by Experimentation

Stefan Thomke ()
Additional contact information
Stefan Thomke: Harvard Business School

A chapter in Management of the Fuzzy Front End of Innovation, 2014, pp 125-140 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Beyond a company’s ability to innovate lies a process of experimentation that enables the organization to create and refine its products and services. The constantly changing environment and complex linkages between variables require not only moving between observation, exploration and experimentation, but also iterating between experiments. Trial-and-error types of experiments are also an integral part of innovation processes, even though they are frequently not fully recognized as experiments. New technologies for experimentation, e.g., rapid prototyping, amplify the importance of managing these factors, thus providing the potential for higher R&D performance, innovation and ultimately new ways of creating value for customers. Regardless of industry, companies share an iterative process of a four-step experimentation cycle, which consists in designing, building, running and analyzing the experiment. How learning occurs, or does not occur, is affected by several factors: fidelity, cost, feedback time, capacity, sequential and parallel strategies, signal-to-noise, and type. The ‘case’ of Team New Zealand – winner of the sailing regatta America’s Cup in 1995 – is woven through this chapter and shows how learning by experimentation works at the front end of innovation by integrating new experimentation technologies with tried-and-true methods and capturing the results in the organization.

Keywords: Computational Fluid Dynamics; Innovation Process; Parallel Strategy; Physical Prototype; High Fidelity Model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-319-01056-4_10

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783319010564

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-01056-4_10

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().