“If
I had to point to one thing that’s made the biggest difference at
Intuit — and there’s a package of things — it was to change how we make
decisions, whenever possible, from decision by bureaucracy, decision by
PowerPoint, persuasion, position, power, to decision by experiment.”
In
order to take the learnings from your innovation experiments and make
better, more productive business decisions, you must capture and have
ready access to all of the relevant information. For example, how
successful was your experiment? Did you really improve your product or
service? Ultimately, are your customers more satisfied?
Let’s say
manufacturing comes up with a new production process that shaves
material costs by 5 percent. Even if you test the material and
experiment by putting this into limited production, without complete,
up-to-date information from customer service and sales as to how this is
playing out in the field, you may be unpleasantly surprised. That 5
percent you are saving in new material may be costing you far more in
returns, customer service complaints or brand damage. That is
information that you need to know. Unfortunately, actually getting that
information can sometimes be a challenge.
