Perpetual experimentalists: How successful entrepreneurs understand customers

Common wisdom in entrepreneurship, most markedly promoted by books such as Lean Startup, emphasizes the importance of rapid experimentation and iteration in many aspects of startup development, from selecting a business model to understanding customer behavior. The latter has become increasingly prevalent over the past decade. Even large, established companies like Amazon and Google engage continuously in these behavioral experiments, or A/B tests, and base fundamental decisions around product and service design and pricing on their outcomes. Some companies even employ Chief Scientists to construct and analyze these tests.

But what do these experiments look like? And what is the value they provide?

By Lana Koretsky

Full Story: http://miter.mit.edu/perpetual-experimentalists-how-successful-entrepreneurs-understand-customers/