Fast, cheap, and under control
When it comes to prescription drugs, patient “compliance” is a concern: Are people, especially the elderly, taking their medication on the proper schedule? While pharmaceutical firms focus on the research and development of drugs, knowing more about patient habits might, at a minimum, help those firms make the case for the effectiveness of their products. Perhaps, then, some firms could benefit from a few experiments designed to help them learn more about their end-users: low-cost interventions that might involve, say, giving customers the opportunity to provide useful feedback about their habits. Indeed, small-scale business experiments designed from within might be the most valuable innovation investments most organizations can make, according to a new book on the subject. “The purpose of an experiment is not to solve the problem, but to generate insights,” says Michael Schrage, a research fellow at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and a member of the school’s executive...