Rob James - Business Experimentation: A Practical Guide for Driving Innovation and Performance in Your Business

Ive worked with the authors and as a consequence know that their advice is based on huge experience and rigour. They write as they talk: common sense supported by acute observation.

Sir John Rose, former CEO, Rolls-Royce (19962011)

Having worked with both authors, I am continually struck by the impact that their methodology has on senior leaders. Their approach is both provocative and pragmatic and has led to some amazing experiment results.

Following the pandemic, our organization has entered a phase where experimentation is ever more critical. Leaders now know very clearly that the future is uncertain and nobody has the perfect answer. We can only find the answers through exploration and experimentation if we are to innovate and thrive in the new world. Creating a culture where this is not just encouraged but seen as essential will become a key differentiator of organizational resilience and performance.

Roger Minton, Head of Leadership Development, Anglo American

In todays volatile and uncertain world, experimentation is the best way to test assumptions and respond quickly to changes. Rob James and Jules Goddard have been teaching the how to of experimentation to executives for the past two decades. They have now put their insights and wisdom into this practical and very readable book. It is a winner! It belongs on the shelf of every manager.

Costas Markides, Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, London Business School

Competent managers deliver on the promise; they follow processes, simply put, and they play the game well. Exceptional leaders on the other hand, challenge the status quo; they dream big, take bold risks, ignite a movement. They create a new game.

Rob James and Jules Goddard in Business Experimentation provide a fresh and innovative perspective of this notion of change, and the role of experimentation in triggering transformational change. Based on my first-hand experience as a participant in Randstads Transformational Leadership Programme, it is clear that under Rob and Jules guidance, the experimentation movement has changed our game. In fact, it has become a key part of ensuring that our organization is future-ready.

Paul Dupuis, CEO, Randstad Japan

In partnership with London Business School, and with the authors playing a key role, we co-designed a programme to prepare our leaders for transformation. By creating connections, building networks and using experiments as a catalyst for change, the programme has contributed to Randstad becoming the world market leader in our industry.

Jos Schut, Chief Human Resources Officer, Randstad

Most seasoned executives buy into the idea that we should encourage more experimentation in business, but they often dont know where to start. This book solves the problem it is full of practical advice, and it is written by two genuine experts who have been helping organizations run business experiments for more than a decade.

Julian Birkinshaw, Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, London Business School

I have greatly enjoyed learning with Jules Goddard over the last several years in the Academic Council of CEDEP at Fontainebleau. He and Rob James have written an exceptional book focusing on the importance of experimentation in business.

The worlds biggest innovations and discoveries have been made as a result of thoughtful experiments, observations with mindfulness and learning from what worked and what did not. This requires us to foster curiosity, the spirit of adventure and the courage to formulate new hypotheses that challenge conventional wisdom, embrace failure and learn.

Jules and Rob have rich experience gained through twelve years of facilitating experiments in several business organizations and have acquired deep insights as a result. Their writing is a dance between philosophical gems and practical nuggets and readers are stimulated to think about how they could embark on their own journeys of experimentation.

Anil Sachdev, Founder and Chairman, School of Inspired Leadership, India

This is a deeply insightful, thought-provoking and practical book, offering an approach that will be of value to organizations of all kinds. The authors unpack experimentation with commendable clarity.

Dr Andrew MacLennan, Founder and Managing Director, Strategy Execution Ltd

Could there be a timelier book than Business Experimentation! As businesses the world over look to reset, I doubt there can be a more important guide for leaders to read. This book will expand thinking, inspire action and provide the courage and know-how to challenge business orthodoxies and assumptions that are in urgent need of such. Business Experimentation provides a cornerstone for any leader or organization intent on understanding what it will take to thrive in our uncertain and complex world. It is a book that will help shape and define your future.

Keith Coats, futurist and leadership expert, and Co-founder of TomorrowToday Global

This book boldly invites us to become experimentalists.

As we make the unprecedented global transition to a so-called new normal in a post-pandemic world, there has never been a better time for leaders to embrace the essential qualities of experimentation as a powerful tool for innovation and transformation. Too often, we remain overly reliant on our prior experience and assumptions to make important decisions in an increasingly uncertain world. But as the authors show, experimentation provides an emergent, relevant and vastly more powerful tool to navigate complexity.

Jules Goddard and Rob James build on their excellent prior writings about business, strategy and creativity to provide a practical approach that will be refreshing and immediately useful to leaders at any level. Importantly, the authors also widen the aperture to the organizational and even societal level to ask what makes a culture of experimentation, how this benefits us, and how to drive this more deliberately as leaders. Finally, they challenge our assumptions about what areas of business can benefit from experimentation, and in the process prove that the field of play is far more vast than we might have believed.

For anyone interested in exploring the spirit of experimentation in their organization, and building a culture of curiosity for themselves, this will be essential reading.

Andy Craggs, The Jump Network specialists in strategic leadership for organizational performance

All great businesses start as successful experiments. For some strange reason, they then choose to abandon the very approach that made them successful in the first place. They get taken over by a caste who can claim credit for cost savings and efficiencies, without ever being held responsible for missed opportunities. This book is a celebration of a truly scientific approach to business, one that seeks to find out what you dont know, rather than endlessly optimizing on the little that you do.

Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman, Ogilvy UK, TEDGlobal speaker, and author of Alchemy: The surprising power of ideas that dont make sense

This book is a perfect balance of academic rigour and business relevance. It is provocative and provides pragmatic tools for success that explain the Why, the What and the How. It has been an inspiring learning journey and a delight to work with the authors, who are driven by a genuine intent to make a difference in shaping individual and organizational growth.