The Complementary Role of Big Data and Experimentation in Innovation

During a busy travel season, digital travel platform Booking.com wanted to try an experiment that would mean changing the site’s landing page. The CEO at the time, Gillian Tans, made the decision to lean into the company’s “test everything” culture—even if it meant failure.

In this episode from 2019, Harvard Business School Professor Stefan Thomke and host Brian Kenny discuss how past experience and intuition can be misleading when attempting to launch an innovative new product, service, business model, or process. Instead, Booking.com and other innovative firms embrace a culture where testing, experimentation, and even failure are at the heart of what they do.

As you plan your summer travels, enjoy this episode about cultivating an experimental mindset with insights from the case Booking.com and Professor Thomke’s book Experimentation Works.