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Posts Tagged ‘HBR’

In the April, 2010, Harvard Business Review there is an interesting article on “Why Businesses Don’t Experiment”. It sited a couple of examples where the author was consulting with some large companies and choose not to try something different even though they had come to him to look at change.

This is a common theme you often find within the cultures of many larger corporations. I know one in particular that has tried several times to change their culture to one where failures are seen as trying, with the old adage that you only learn by doing. However it seems that conservatism normally takes over and upper management perceives that they have too much at stake and hence back off from “experimenting”. Change is difficult for large corporations as they have spent years branding themselves and any one business unit that deviates from the corporate branding faces a lot of scrutiny.

The smaller the company the more tolerant they are of experimenting and in some cases will actually promote it. Entrepreneurs often have to experiment with their opportunity to find the right niche. What separates these from large corporations, in my opinion, is they are “nimble”, meaning they can change very rapidly. It is very common for a small business or entrepreneur to go through 100′s of prototypes or designs before finding the right one to move into the market place. Large corporations rarely have the patiences for that type of turnover.

You can read the article here: Column: Why Businesses Don’t Experiment – Harvard Business Review.