Empiricism and the scientific method have had some positive impact on the practice of business. Most people recognize the market as a great external object of study, yet scientific impact on innovation is usually limited and relegated to the domain of hunches by analytic experts. For their part, business schools tend to crank out expert planners and analysts, but do not expressly delve into experimentation. Schrage thinks that is a mistake and writes this book to plead his case that experiments can drive innovation in the business world, much as it does in the sciences.

Empiricism as a practice functions as a core historic precept of the scientific method and continues to transform modern life. It simply means that theories/ideas need to be tested against reality for their truthfulness. Few have problems with this idea, and efforts to enact empiricism often expand into building useful and even revolutionary tools to do reality-checks. Even fields like psychology use this lingo in coaching clients how to approach life. Sometimes, humans believe deeply in their ideas, and experiments do not always prove those ideas to be completely correct.

Schrage thinks it’s time that the business world embrace such an ethic of experimentation. He, a PhD economist, tires of seeing businesses hide behind the analysis of MBAs instead of running inexpensive (“cheap”) tests to see if the market can bear such a practice. I am no businessperson, but in my field of software development, we often build slow so that we can quickly correct mistakes without misspending tens of thousands of dollars. Indeed, prototypes to test these reality often become the basis of the next innovation. Though no economic or management expert, it certainly makes good sense to me to expand this practice of hypothesis generation to business planning.

Of course, the devil is always in the details. The strength of this ethic lies in coming up with good hypotheses, itself an art-form. Many business schools churn out planners, not thinkers and experimenters. Implementing this ethic may require further education in order for such scientific thinking to become prevalent. I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment that experiments trump analysis, but analysis is more prevalent because it’s easier. Scientific thinking is harder and more disciplined, but Schrage devotes the concluding chapters of this book to developing how this change can transpire. More thought and explanation could help businesses with this task because the potential is high. ( )

Michael Schrage provides a methodology for running creative experiments to produce high-impact innovations quickly, simply, and with less expense. This is an innovation process meant for the quick-moving business world of the 21st century. Schrage describes a team process that generates quick results to allow for quick decision making. This is not a process involving surveys and elaborate market research. Schrage’s methodology is about discovering what actually works and what doesn’t. He admits that not all executives are ready to embrace his methodology. The established R&D mindset that embraces elaborate planning and analysis is deeply embedded in organizational thinking. Schrage provides many examples, however, of cutting-edge companies that have adopted the cheap experiment approach and are prospering as a result. Schrage provides an innovation approach for those ready to jettison outdated methodologies and to compete in the 21st century. ( )