Digital transformation is moving faster than ever before. We regularly hear about organizations disrupting their market; Amazon, Uber and Spotify being prime examples. Yet the majority of organizations are struggling to implement the changes needed at the pace required to keep up with their competition, let alone become market leaders.

One of the answers to this we are told is to introduce experimentation to assist in tackling business challenges or accelerating the innovation agenda. However, how can you do this in organizations which can be slow to adapt and embrace new concepts?

Successfully integrating experimentation as a concept into an organization is as much about culture and mindset as it is having the right space or the ability to scale. The organizational and departmental leadership have to trust their employees; gifting them the freedom to try new approaches without fear of failure.

This is not always easy to do and there are numerous barriers to taking this approach, including:

• A lack of corporate vision - making it difficult to provide a framework for any experimentation to take place within and define suitable success criteria;
• Resistance to change - some people within organizations still believe they have always worked in a certain way and there is no reason to change;
• Poorly developed annual appraisal measures - these often promote behaviors which contradict the essence and purpose of experimentation;
• Siloed organizations - creating artificial cultural barriers, which often prevent the adoption of new ideas and concepts across an organization; and
• The perceived additional cost of experimentation - it is seen as another initiative which is going to cost money.

Instead of looking at the barriers to initiating experimentation within an organization we need to look at the value that it can deliver. One approach is using what we call "Outcomes-Based Thinking" model — shifting your focus from the problems of the current state to your desired outcome. This value can be cost avoidance or acceleration of business benefit. Remembering the acceleration of business benefit will ideally give an organization a head-start on the competition not just the ability to keep up with them.

To help assess the value experimentation can provide to your organization, ask yourself the following questions. In your organization's current innovation or change process:

• What is the timescale for creating a business case?
• What is the cost of creating a business case?
• Are these business cases revisited after investment approval is received?
• How many projects fail to deliver the business benefits stated in the original business case?
• How long do these project take to even partially realize the benefits stated?
• How far has the competition moved on while your organization has been developing the business case for a now outdated change?
• How often are tough decisions made to cancel projects that will not meet the stated business outcomes?

Once you have considered the value of experimentation and compared that to the barriers, there will be a clear case to at least try experimentation in your organization.

To embrace and incubate experimentation with your organization, first initiate an experimentation pilot. “Experiment with Experimentation”

• Give a focused diverse team of people a small number of challenges focused on one area of an organization;
• Define and follow a simple experimentation process;
• Agree on your success criteria for your experiments;
• Allocate a dedicated space or meeting room;
• Time box the experiments; and
• Celebrate the conclusion of all experiments.

If the value of experimentation has been demonstrated in your organization, investigate scaling up the service. If not, celebrate the fact you have tried something new and have disproved the hypothesis “Experimentation will help my organization tackle challenges more effectively” — remembering that disproving a hypothesis is not failure. Failure is not being able to prove or refute quickly.

In the words of Henry Ford - One who fears failure limits his activities. Failure is only the opportunity to more intelligently begin again.