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By Root 966 0

which lasted more than twenty-five years, he and his colleagues performed more than twenty thousand individual experiments. What is remarkable about this project is that it had no academic backing, no government R&D budget. Its entire cost was paid by industry out of the immediate profits generated from the higher productivity the experiments enabled. This was only one experimental program to uncover the hidden productivity in just one kind of work. Other scientific management disciples spent years investigating bricklaying, farming, and even shoveling. They were obsessed with learning the truth and were not satisfied with the folk wisdom of craftspersons or the parables of experts.

Can any of us imagine a modern knowledge-work manager with the same level of interest in the methods his or her employees use? How much of our current innovation work is guided by catchphrases that lack a scientific foundation?

A New Research Program

What comparable research programs could we be engaged in to discover how to work more effectively?

For one thing, we have very little understanding of what stimulates productivity under conditions of extreme uncertainty. Luckily, with cycle times falling everywhere, we have many opportunities to test new approaches. Thus, I propose that we create startup testing labs that could put all manner of product development methodologies to the test.

How might those tests be conducted? We could bring in small cross-functional teams, perhaps beginning with product and engineering, and have them work to solve problems by using different development methodologies. We could begin with problems with clear right answers, perhaps drawn from the many international programming competitions that have developed databases of well-defined problems with clear solutions. These competitions also provide a clear baseline of how long it should take for various problems to be solved so that we could establish clearly the individual problem-solving prowess of the experimental subjects.

Using this kind of setup for calibration, we could begin to vary the conditions of the experiments. The challenge will be to increase the level of uncertainty about what the right answer is while still being able to measure the quality of the outcome objectively. Perhaps we could use real-world customer problems and then have real consumers test the output of the teams’ work. Or perhaps we could go so far as to build minimum viable products for solving the same set of problems over and over again to quantify which produces the best customer conversion rates.

We also could vary the all-important cycle time by choosing more or less complex development platforms and distribution channels to test the impact of those factors on the true productivity of the teams.

Most of all, we need to develop clear methods for holding teams accountable for validated learning. I have proposed one method in this book: innovation accounting using a well-defined financial model and engine of growth. However, it is naive to assume that this is the best possible method. As it is adopted in more and more companies, undoubtedly new techniques will be suggested, and we need to be able to evaluate the new ideas as rigorously as possible.

All these questions raise the possibilities of public-private partnerships between research universities and the entrepreneurial communities they seek to foster. It also suggests that universities may be able to add value in more ways than by being simply financial investors or creators of startup incubators, as is the current trend. My prediction is that wherever this research is conducted will become an epicenter of new entrepreneurial practice, and universities conducting this research therefore may be able to achieve a much higher level of commercialization of their basic research activities.4

THE LONG-TERM STOCK EXCHANGE

Beyond simple research, I believe our goal should be to change the entire ecosystem of entrepreneurship. Too much of our startup industry has devolved into a feeder system for giant media companies and investment