Customer Reviews

Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries

5 star:		(51)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Having read and reviewed True North, a book Peter Sims co-authored with Bill George, I was curious to know what he has to say about "how breakthrough ideas emerge from small discoveries." I was pleased but hardly surprised that Sims has a great deal of value to share, much of it (as he duly acknowledges) gained from conversations with or rigorous study of various thought leaders and they include a few surprises. Chris Rock, for example. His routines are the result of an exhausting process of continuous (mostly failed) experiments, constant modification, and subtle refinement. Other experimental innovators and thought leaders include Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Larry Page and Sergey Brin (co-founders of Google), Saras Sarasvathy, Pixar's Ed Catmull and John Lasseter, Chet Pipkin, Frank Gehry, Bing Gordon, U.S. Army Brigadier General H.R. McMaster, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Steve Jobs, Jeffrey Dyer and Hal Gregersen, Richard Wiseman, and Eric von Hippel.

As Sims explains, his book's proposition is based on an experimental approach that involves a lot of little bets and certain creative methods to identify possibilities and build up to great outcomes eventually, after frequent failures. (Actually, experimental innovation has no failures; rather, there are initiatives that have not as yet succeeded, each of which is a precious learning opportunity.) "At the core of this experimental approach, little bets are concrete actions taken to discover, test, and develop ideas that are achievable and affordable. They begin as creative possibilities that get iterated and refined over time, and they are particularly valuable when trying to navigate amid uncertainty, create something new, or attend to open-ended problems."

Constant experimentation ("learn by doing") is fundamental to this approach, as indicated, as are a playful, improvisational, and humorous environment; immersion in unfamiliar situations, localities, circumstances, etc.; definition of specific questions to answer, specific problems to solve, specific objectives to achieve, etc.; flexibility amidst ambiguity and uncertainty in combination with a willingness to accept reorientation; and, as indicated, constant iteration (reiteration?) to test, evaluate, refine, test again, etc. Those who are curious wish to understand what works. Experimental innovators have an insatiable curiosity to know what works (or doesn't), why it works (or doesn't), and how it can be improved.

It is important to understand that, as Sims explains, "we can't plot a series of small wins in advance, we must use experiments in order for them to emerge." That is, conduct lots (I mean LOTS) of small experiments (betting small amounts of hours and dollars) and then, as small (modest) "wins" occur, increase the "bet" and see what happens...or doesn't. This process is iterative and never ends. The fundamental advantages are obvious. It allows people to discover new whatevers through an emergent, organic process of frugal but sufficient investments, and, it allows for all manner of adjustments (course corrections, additions/deletions, increases/reductions, etc.) at any point throughout the process.

If your organization is in need of breakthrough ideas, why don't you provide them? Peter Sims provides in this book just about everything you need to know to understand the process and what must be done to initiate and then sustain it. However, the discoveries cannot be made until the experiments occur. If not you, who? If not now, when?

_Little Bets_ by Peter Sims is an excellent read. As someone who led a product design team at Intel, has a handful of U.S. patents and has dabbled in film making, I can tell you these insights play well across industry. I recommend it highly to anyone interested in tapping into the design revolution to improve their work and help change the world.

I often measure content I consume according to how much I think about it the next day. This book left me with a number of outstanding insights that I apply consistently.

Sims explains that when it comes to getting great work out of people be the student a coworker or yourself, the key seems to be to praise people for *effort* that they put in rather than merely praising them for their outcomes. It seems silly given that context to say that this book achieves great things but it does!

The book is well researched, and draws from a number of different fields. While many business books focus solely on one industry or one school of thought, Sims draws from an incredibly diverse palette to establish some consistent themes. We hear stories from comedians, military leaders, filmmakers, architects, and even a few entrepreneurs.

The key insight from this book is to treat life is an experiment where failure teaches as much a success. If you can scale your bets to the right size (a.k.a. little) is show that failures are less painful and allow course corrections. You can then place larger bets on things that will be successful. Trust me on this little bet -- buy the book.

This book has some interesting anecdotal stuff. I especially liked the stories on Pixar, and the creative process as it relates to learning in young children.

That said, most of the time when I flipped the page and saw the referenced person - Muhammad Yunnus, General McMaster, or Malcolm Gladwell - as I reader of Tom Ricks' Fiasco, Banker to the Poor, The Tipping Point, and books on Lean Start-Up and Customer Development, I already knew where the author was headed and was left underwhelmed.

I'm not usually moved to review books on Amazon, however, I honestly believe the book is overrated as it stands with a lot of four and five star reviews. The book has a great title that certainly drew me in, yet I didn't find anything groundbreaking inside.

This book is easily one of the top-10 business books I've read. But it's about more than just business. The bets that Peter Sims talks about reach across every aspect of life, from business, to art, to child-rearing.

Making little bets is about doing little tests. Try something. Get feedback. Refine. Get more feedback. The creative process is a hands-on experiment. Lasting, reproducible success comes from small corrections over time. The feedback you get from making little bets leads to the best outcomes... the ones you didn't and couldn't predict.

I was fortunate to get my hands on an advance proof of "Little Bets" and was hooked from the introduction. Having been a courtroom criminal defense lawyer for more than a decade, having built and sold a successful tech company, and now working on my second tech start-up, this book spoke to me. Although I didn't know what to call it at the time, my successes in the courtroom and in business came from taking a little bets approach.

If you are creative (especially if you work in corporate America), this book will probably solidify what you already know in your heart and give you the tools, confidence and case-studies to challenge the status quo. If you manage creative people, you can't afford to overlook this remarkable book. And if you're a parent, or teacher, or coach, or community leader, this book will give you tools that will make a world of difference to those who look up to you.

Do yourself a favor. Order this book now.

Honestly, it was a decent read. I don't mean to make it sound worse than it is. Would have given it 3.5 stars if I had that option, but this book doesn't deserve four.

The main point was well-stated and, in my opinion, educational and informative. Then it was re-stated and re-stated and re-stated. If it had been about 1/4 of the length, I'm not sure I would have missed out on much. Fortunately, some (not all) of the anecdotal support was interesting to read.

I do not wish to belittle this book when I say that it does not contain anything novel if you are reading a bit about innovation. However, if the ideas seem novel to you this is a great book to read to get further exposure. For good and for bad it is written in the typical management book style with lots of examples that prove the point the author is trying to make. That would be unacceptable research, but this book is not research. It is a great synthesis of other people's work and it is written in a very easily digestible style. Three solid stars.

The most successful entrepreneurs don't begin with brilliant ideas - they discover them en route to unknown destinations. Google's founders original goal was to prioritize online library searches. Not until 2002 did they create AdWords (borrowed from GoTo.com/Overture.com) - after three weeks it produced 2X the revenue of fixed price ads within the same period. Amazon's Associates Program allows other web-sites to earn fees by sending buyers to Amazon - one of many tested ideas (most fail) that quickly exceeded expectations. Third party vendors now account for 30% of its sales. Grameen Bank was developed incrementally in the 1977 era.

Conceptual innovators (eg. Mozart) pursue bod new ideas and often make their greatest achievements early in life. Experimental innovators use trial-and-error methods to gradually build up to breakthroughs. The most dramatic example of this is the Toyota Production System - an approach that greatly lowered costs and response times while also increasing quality. It as developed over a several-year period via incremental improvements and several key perspectives - eg. inventory hides problems, set-up costs can be dramatically reduced, fast feedback is essential, and generalists are much more valuable than had been envisioned. (Unfortunately, "Little Bets" does not utilize this classic example.)

Chris Rock picks venues where he can experiment when beginning work on a new show - arriving unannounced at small comedy clubs not far from where he lives. Developing an hour-long act takes 6 months - 1 year for top comedians, working 5-7 nights/week.

Large companies tend to become hindered by their size when planning for growth. Sizable growth for them seems to mandate big projects and major breakthroughs. Conversely, H-P hired SRI to do market research on the potential for its new calculator, the HP-35, in 1972. SRI gave the project a 'thumbs down. HP's leaders ignored their recommendation and instead tested 1,000 (priced at $400) in the market to see what would happen. Five months later it was selling 1,000/day.

Fixed mind-set individuals believe their abilities are set in stone. Growth mind-set individuals view failures as an opportunity for growth. Failing quickly is important - fast feedback and improvement cycles. Not investing too much into early development allows easier psychological acceptance of the need for change. Attitude is 'better to fix problems than prevent errors.'

Pixar animation staff submit their work to a control computer at the end of each day, and it is reviewed by peers and supervisors in a non-judgmental manner the next morning. 'Plussing' is used to build on portions of the work that are liked.

The author suggests using early adopters as a source of ideas - the problem, however, is that the vast majority of new products fail. Pixar began without a clear view of where it was headed - began as a hardware company, became computer-generated animation firm that developed its own software (RenderMan), and worked its way up from producing short animated ads, to 1.5 minute films, to full-length block-buster features.

David Shaywitz's review of Little Bets (Wall Street Journal, April 22, 2011) had it right. This excellent book is enthusiastic and example rich. Of equal consideration is the potential for Little Bets to help focus our attention on the nonlinear process of discovery, and in so doing, change prevailing paradigms. This is an important work.

There is a fallacy in the book - that anyone can do "Little Bets" and win.
The examples quoted from the book are:
Barrack Obama, the book itself (the author is from Stanford and a Venture Capital firm) , General Petraeus and Tal Afar in Iraq, architect Gehry, Nobelist Yunus, NBC's Tim Russert, IDEO, and a host of others.
As the blurb asks, "What do Apple CEO Steve Jobs, comedian Chris Rock, prize-winning architect Frank Gehry, the story developers at Pixar films, and the Army Chief of Strategic Plans all have in common?"
What is common to them is, they are all high achievers with high IQs.
In other words, they can try out different experiments very quickly - the more powerful your brain computer, the swifter you can come up with experiments, and execute them, learning from each result and adapting your execution for the next iteration.

There were NO examples of ordinary and average people succeeding wildly.

The useful points are:
Experimental Innovation.
Learning from the small people - everyone has something.
Having an open mind and a large network of people.
Learning from active users of the domain (or product) you are interested in.
Building on small wins to move forward.

The main thesis of Little Bets - Experimental Innovation - is not new to most creative people.
I developed a mantra for myself when I worked on a prototype - The Invention is in the Prototyping. i.e. as you prototype along, the invention changes as you learn.
In other words, the best and most valuable parts do not emerge at the beginning, but reveal themselves as you go along in the experimental prototyping with an open mind.
Again, the fallacy in the book is implying that a) everyone can do it b) it will be quick and easy.
That is why it is a best seller. Rah Rah Rah! Everyone wants to hear they can do it and buys the book enabling him a mountain of money (no author dares say the reverse).
However 1) A little bet may not be enough. A little bet for a corporation may involve having 2 people working on it fulltime. For you, 1 hour a night may be a little bet, but may not be enough - and it may take too long.
Case: Paul Buchheit worked on Gmail alone at Google. However Paul is a top notch software developer.
Yes, we can all improve - but here's the truth. Only a few will win.
My Personal experience: In 2004 I had an idea that I felt solved a problem of having to listen to an entire recorded speech or sermon to digest it - but instead, the user would view the table of contents and jump to the important parts.
Further, the user could attach text notes, pictures, hyperlinks to points in the audio. I developed a crude prototype, iterated and added ideas, came up with more, and called it 'juwo' (juwo.com is still up but not updated).
To do anything on the project, I had to quit my job and do it fulltime - my Little Bet became a Big Bet for me.
However iterating alone was really slow, and had no partners and no investors. I could not communicate the vision well and the User Interface sucked. After trying and trying, my "Little Bet" failed, costing me my savings and two years.
I am saying all this because if you were pumped up by the book and feel you are ready to go off and found the next breakthrough company, slow down and "Count the Cost" as Jesus said in the Bible (do an internet search for Luke 14:28-34)
Other critiques:
- Biased towards the Democratic party, pro-Obama. Yet he does not appear ideological.
- He draws the boundary lines around his case studies so that the conclusions will fit his agenda. However any grownup knows that looking at the bigger picture in Geography and in Time will often tell you a different story. For instance, the case study of Tal Afar in Iraq.

The only real problem I have with this business book is its title. Sims, a writer and business consultant, has tried to organize the book around the concept of "little bets," the concept that good business ideas are best tried out in small pieces, the way that a stand-up comedian might refine his act in a small club before taking it on the road or using the jokes as part of his permanent act.

However, the "small bets" idea really doesn't account for most of Sims' insights. Think of this book more as a compendium of interesting ideas about the mystery of creativity. How do we come up with good ideas? What are the true origins of innovation? These concepts really hijack much of the book and take us far away from the "little bets" concept.

Often, what seems like "luck" in business, Sims writes, is a matter of expanding one's networks, interacting with many people, and being prepared. "The more people and perspectives in your sphere of reference, the more likely good insights and opportunities will combine."

So think of this book as a catch-all of good ideas. Dip in and dip out of it. You might read about Chris Rock's refining of his comedy act, or about how Pixar became the animation giant that it is today, or about how a young computer-store employee asked questions about mundane items like printer cables and ended up the founder of a billion-dollar company.