To Make a Better Bet, Use Trial and Error
We tend to romanticize entrepreneurs, inventors, and great business minds. We have this notion that they are a rare breed of people who are lucky enough to be hit by strokes of brilliance that the rest of us can’t even fathom. In these moments, they dream up the next great idea — the light bulb, the automobile, the iPhone, Twitter — and then they wake up and execute their visions and become legends. But the truth is that science doesn’t work that way, and neither does business. To succeed, we really need to trade in our blue sky brainstorming sessions for some old fashioned trial and error.
Freeman Dyson is a famous theoretical physicist and mathematician who’s made numerous contributions to the fields of physics and mathematics — contributions that have paved the way for many of the technologies we enjoy today. He’s a great scientist. And some of the lessons he teaches are immediately relevant to business today. Take, for instance, this quote from his 2003 TED talk:
“In science, we should look for what is detectable, not what is probable.”
In this simple statement, Dyson is arguing two important points. The first is that, when we’re making a decision or forming an argument or hypothesis, we should never presuppose a right answer. In science, as in business, what is probable is often determined subjectively. We guess the right answer and then seek to prove it. That is a common fallacy in science and one that PhD studies are designed to stamp out. This is why in academia you must test your guess against the null hypothesis which presupposes your guess is wrong. We don’t assume a new drug works to reduce blood pressure; we assume the null hypothesis, which is that it has no effect, until proven by experiments. Don’t presuppose; instead, test and retest until you remove wrong answers.
Science is more like sculpting than painting, where you chisel away at a rock of uncertainty until you are left with a kernel of truth. Business should be treated in the same manner. Why guess what the best business strategy is when you can cost effectively test your way to the best solution?
The second point is more profound. When advocating for testing what is detectable, Dyson is pushing against the quest for perfection. When scientists create heady theories that cannot be testable, that is bad science, pure and simple. If something can’t be tested — isn’t detectable — it shouldn’t be pursued scientifically. This is not to say that things that can’t currently be tested shouldn’t be pursued; string theory was discovered well before it was testable, so the theory remained largely dormant (and often ridiculed) until it was confirmed through testing years later. The point is to focus on things that are testable or will be testable in the future. This is a hard pill to swallow in science, but it is even more critical medicine in business. Too many employees and executives fail to execute because they get bogged down with perfection, or fail to act because they get bogged down with theory.
Now, by any measure, Freeman Dyson is a theoretical guy. After all, he’s a theoretical physicist and mathematician, and as anyone who has ever flunked out of college physics knows, theoretical physics is about as theoretical and abstract as it gets. You need a mass of brainpower coupled with an overactive imagination to even understand the field, much less meaningfully contribute to it. And Dyson’s contributions are everywhere: Dyson sphere, Dyson operator, Dyson series, Schwinger-Dyson equation, Dyson conjecture, Dyson tree, Dyson’s transform. (No, he is not the guy who invented the vacuum cleaner.)
But even as a theoretical guy, Dyson advocates trial and error, which in technology often amounts to nothing more than simple tinkering. Why does one of the greatest theoretical minds of our time advise us to get out of our heads and just play around? Turns out, there’s sound scientific (and psychological) reasoning for his advice.
Here’s what he has to say about technology:
Let’s take a practical example from business: An experienced marketer who plans out a nuanced media campaign can be bested by a 22-year-old kid who just starts testing 100 different ideas. The kid might spend a few dollars testing on Google, maybe some money on remnant TV or radio, or maybe launch a direct mail campaign. Eventually she will stumble on a successful outcome and leverage that into more success by testing new ideas against that baseline. Contrast that with an experienced Chief Marketing Officer who might spend ten times that much on a single creative TV spot with the expectation that it alone will be superior. A theoretical solution — even when routed in experience — is rarely as good as iteration after iteration of real world testing.
In business, many of us spend our lives planning for that perfect moment rather than executing in the here and now. Success never comes from a blank slate and a few crayons: That is no way to create a work of business art. And even if there were, chances are the resulting picture wouldn’t be as valuable as if we had been given a 264-pack of Crayolas and the chance to do multiple iterations on the back of a napkin. Business is far more fluid than art. Yet, too often we wait for someone to present us with a blank canvas. When that doesn’t happen, we complain about how we can’t do our best work because of reasons x, y, and z: The budget isn’t big enough, the board isn’t supportive enough, the customers aren’t sophisticated enough for the masterpiece Big Genius Business Strategy of the Century.
Theoretical knowledge is great (in theory), and education gives us the background to make guesses that are perhaps in the ballpark (or at least the same city as the ballpark). But it’s just as important to close the books and act. So in the spirit of Freeman Dyson, it’s time to stop planning and start executing. If one of the greatest theorists in the world can do it, the rest of us certainly have no excuse.
Freeman Dyson is a famous theoretical physicist and mathematician who’s made numerous contributions to the fields of physics and mathematics — contributions that have paved the way for many of the technologies we enjoy today. He’s a great scientist. And some of the lessons he teaches are immediately relevant to business today. Take, for instance, this quote from his 2003 TED talk:
“In science, we should look for what is detectable, not what is probable.”
In this simple statement, Dyson is arguing two important points. The first is that, when we’re making a decision or forming an argument or hypothesis, we should never presuppose a right answer. In science, as in business, what is probable is often determined subjectively. We guess the right answer and then seek to prove it. That is a common fallacy in science and one that PhD studies are designed to stamp out. This is why in academia you must test your guess against the null hypothesis which presupposes your guess is wrong. We don’t assume a new drug works to reduce blood pressure; we assume the null hypothesis, which is that it has no effect, until proven by experiments. Don’t presuppose; instead, test and retest until you remove wrong answers.
Science is more like sculpting than painting, where you chisel away at a rock of uncertainty until you are left with a kernel of truth. Business should be treated in the same manner. Why guess what the best business strategy is when you can cost effectively test your way to the best solution?
The second point is more profound. When advocating for testing what is detectable, Dyson is pushing against the quest for perfection. When scientists create heady theories that cannot be testable, that is bad science, pure and simple. If something can’t be tested — isn’t detectable — it shouldn’t be pursued scientifically. This is not to say that things that can’t currently be tested shouldn’t be pursued; string theory was discovered well before it was testable, so the theory remained largely dormant (and often ridiculed) until it was confirmed through testing years later. The point is to focus on things that are testable or will be testable in the future. This is a hard pill to swallow in science, but it is even more critical medicine in business. Too many employees and executives fail to execute because they get bogged down with perfection, or fail to act because they get bogged down with theory.
Now, by any measure, Freeman Dyson is a theoretical guy. After all, he’s a theoretical physicist and mathematician, and as anyone who has ever flunked out of college physics knows, theoretical physics is about as theoretical and abstract as it gets. You need a mass of brainpower coupled with an overactive imagination to even understand the field, much less meaningfully contribute to it. And Dyson’s contributions are everywhere: Dyson sphere, Dyson operator, Dyson series, Schwinger-Dyson equation, Dyson conjecture, Dyson tree, Dyson’s transform. (No, he is not the guy who invented the vacuum cleaner.)
But even as a theoretical guy, Dyson advocates trial and error, which in technology often amounts to nothing more than simple tinkering. Why does one of the greatest theoretical minds of our time advise us to get out of our heads and just play around? Turns out, there’s sound scientific (and psychological) reasoning for his advice.
Here’s what he has to say about technology:
You can’t possibly get a good technology going without an enormous number of failures. It’s a universal rule. If you look at bicycles, there were thousands of weird models built and tried before they found the one that really worked. You could never design a bicycle theoretically. Even now, after we’ve been building them for 100 years, it’s very difficult to understand just why a bicycle works – it’s even difficult to formulate it as a mathematical problem. But just by trial and error, we found out how to do it, and the error was essential.
When we dream up solutions to a problem, we tend to bias our selections based on our preconceived notions of what’s probable. We take educated guesses, make some assumptions, then come up with a perfect theoretical solution. But the real world doesn’t work this way, and perfection is often the enemy of success. For every successful perfectionist — like Steve Jobs — there are dozens more that have failed in the pursuit of perfection. If you think you are Steve Jobs, by all means accept nothing short of perfection; for the rest of us, execution is a far better measure of success.Let’s take a practical example from business: An experienced marketer who plans out a nuanced media campaign can be bested by a 22-year-old kid who just starts testing 100 different ideas. The kid might spend a few dollars testing on Google, maybe some money on remnant TV or radio, or maybe launch a direct mail campaign. Eventually she will stumble on a successful outcome and leverage that into more success by testing new ideas against that baseline. Contrast that with an experienced Chief Marketing Officer who might spend ten times that much on a single creative TV spot with the expectation that it alone will be superior. A theoretical solution — even when routed in experience — is rarely as good as iteration after iteration of real world testing.
In business, many of us spend our lives planning for that perfect moment rather than executing in the here and now. Success never comes from a blank slate and a few crayons: That is no way to create a work of business art. And even if there were, chances are the resulting picture wouldn’t be as valuable as if we had been given a 264-pack of Crayolas and the chance to do multiple iterations on the back of a napkin. Business is far more fluid than art. Yet, too often we wait for someone to present us with a blank canvas. When that doesn’t happen, we complain about how we can’t do our best work because of reasons x, y, and z: The budget isn’t big enough, the board isn’t supportive enough, the customers aren’t sophisticated enough for the masterpiece Big Genius Business Strategy of the Century.
Theoretical knowledge is great (in theory), and education gives us the background to make guesses that are perhaps in the ballpark (or at least the same city as the ballpark). But it’s just as important to close the books and act. So in the spirit of Freeman Dyson, it’s time to stop planning and start executing. If one of the greatest theorists in the world can do it, the rest of us certainly have no excuse.
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