Collective Genius

7

Creative Agility

We used to launch products in an “all or nothing” mode to all of our users. Now we had the capability to test multiple different live versions of new products on 1 percent samples of our users. This yielded huge data sets and brought with it a change in mind-set for approaching innovation. We began to avoid projects that only allowed for “zero or one” decisions, instead choosing projects that could be rolled out and evaluated in small slices.

—Philipp Justus, then head of eBay Germany

Members of groups that develop an innovative solution often recall afterward that it appeared unexpectedly—out of the blue. But in studies that carefully monitor such groups' activities, it's clear that the solution almost always emerges ...