There was a great quote from one of the interviewees for the agility and innovation research I did recently for Econsultancy:
“A lot of data-driven companies become boring – they repeat the best performing thing again and again. But we’re trying to create an environment where people feel empowered to make change”
This came from a fascinating interview with the founder of a very successful digital business. It sounded like the culture they had created there was big contributor to their success. But that balance between continuous optimisation and empowerment to go off in new directions, using data to remove assumptions and guesswork over time, felt spot on. Test and learn is great, and more companies should do more of it, but as always it's the combination of data driven decision-making with altogether more human, less empirical imperatives that drives real success. And stops you from becoming boring.
Photo Credit: Tom Coates via Compfight cc
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