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© 2007. Moskowitz and Gofman. All rights reserved.
The roots of RDE
Selling Blue Elephants
By Howard Moskowitz and Alex Gofman
By Howard Moskowitz and Alex Gofman
| Moskowitz Jacobs Inc. |
Let’s trace the origins of RDE. It has an interesting history, filled with dollops of experimental
psychology, a healthy dose of business pragmatism, and the vision of a new branch of social
science.
First, the tools of experimental psychology. RDE is founded on the realization that perception
and behavior are linked in a two-way exchange. If you increase the level of sweetener in Pepsi
Cola, it will taste sweeter. Liking can change as well - consumers can grow to prefer the sweeter
cola. In fact, if you want to create an optimum Pepsi, one strategy changes sweetener level,
measures sweetness, measures liking, and finds where liking reaches the highest or optimum level.
This is a simple example of RDE. You change the stimulus, you measure the response, you find the
pattern or the rule, you make the product, and, hopefully, you succeed in the marketplace more
than you did before. So RDE is, in part, a branch of experimental psychology.
Second, the driving power of business. Businesses make products, offer services, and, for the
most part, try to do so with some profit. With increasing competition, you are better off when your
offering is “new” (at least, perceived to be a fresh idea), “better” (according to the people buying
it), and “profitable” (at the end of the day, after all the costs have been factored in). You may be
lucky to guess correctly about the product or message in business, if you are the so-called golden
tongue, a maverick executive, one of the truly talented. For the other 99% of people, it’s good to
know how the world works and the rules by which to make the offering better and cheaper - of
course, all the time doing it faster. Unless you are in that 1% of incredibly gifted or lucky
predictors, business works better with rules. These rules will tell you how to create winning
formulations that taste great, better messaging that grabs customers, better packages, or magazines
that fly off the shelf. RDE is about how best to perform each of these tasks. RDE produces results
every time you use it. The process takes just days, not years. In some cases, the results were
obtained in just a few hours. That speed and accuracy are good for business.
Third, the world-view of social science. Formal, scientific experimentation in social science with
the express objective of generating rules is just beginning. Not much has been done yet in the way
experimental psychologists and businesspeople do experiments. However, RDE is related to a field
called adaptive experimentation (AE), or adaptive management. AE tries to find answers to
ecological or social problems through trial and error, using feedback to drive the next steps. At each
step in this process, the researcher looks at the data, tries to discern a pattern that might exist, and
adjusts the conditions. The most publicized cases of AE are very lengthy, large-scale, even
monumental projects in ecology, theoretical science, or the sociology/environmental area. However,
AE doesn’t generate rules. Instead, AE searches for workable solutions using the process of
experimentation. AE is not defined by a simple experimental structure with finite steps, nor is it
governed by limited time frames. RDE comes into social science by using experimental methods to
understand the algebra of citizens’ minds.
psychology, a healthy dose of business pragmatism, and the vision of a new branch of social
science.
First, the tools of experimental psychology. RDE is founded on the realization that perception
and behavior are linked in a two-way exchange. If you increase the level of sweetener in Pepsi
Cola, it will taste sweeter. Liking can change as well - consumers can grow to prefer the sweeter
cola. In fact, if you want to create an optimum Pepsi, one strategy changes sweetener level,
measures sweetness, measures liking, and finds where liking reaches the highest or optimum level.
This is a simple example of RDE. You change the stimulus, you measure the response, you find the
pattern or the rule, you make the product, and, hopefully, you succeed in the marketplace more
than you did before. So RDE is, in part, a branch of experimental psychology.
Second, the driving power of business. Businesses make products, offer services, and, for the
most part, try to do so with some profit. With increasing competition, you are better off when your
offering is “new” (at least, perceived to be a fresh idea), “better” (according to the people buying
it), and “profitable” (at the end of the day, after all the costs have been factored in). You may be
lucky to guess correctly about the product or message in business, if you are the so-called golden
tongue, a maverick executive, one of the truly talented. For the other 99% of people, it’s good to
know how the world works and the rules by which to make the offering better and cheaper - of
course, all the time doing it faster. Unless you are in that 1% of incredibly gifted or lucky
predictors, business works better with rules. These rules will tell you how to create winning
formulations that taste great, better messaging that grabs customers, better packages, or magazines
that fly off the shelf. RDE is about how best to perform each of these tasks. RDE produces results
every time you use it. The process takes just days, not years. In some cases, the results were
obtained in just a few hours. That speed and accuracy are good for business.
Third, the world-view of social science. Formal, scientific experimentation in social science with
the express objective of generating rules is just beginning. Not much has been done yet in the way
experimental psychologists and businesspeople do experiments. However, RDE is related to a field
called adaptive experimentation (AE), or adaptive management. AE tries to find answers to
ecological or social problems through trial and error, using feedback to drive the next steps. At each
step in this process, the researcher looks at the data, tries to discern a pattern that might exist, and
adjusts the conditions. The most publicized cases of AE are very lengthy, large-scale, even
monumental projects in ecology, theoretical science, or the sociology/environmental area. However,
AE doesn’t generate rules. Instead, AE searches for workable solutions using the process of
experimentation. AE is not defined by a simple experimental structure with finite steps, nor is it
governed by limited time frames. RDE comes into social science by using experimental methods to
understand the algebra of citizens’ minds.
| Click here to see the Malcolm Gladwell speech about the roots of RDE and about the authors videotaped at TED Conference (California, 2004) . |
| Excerpted with permission (from Malcolm Gladwell's talk at the TED Conference) |
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| "The reader will get more than just an intellectually appealing learning experience. He will enjoy the journey, discovering how wonderfully this book has been written." Johannes Hartmann Vice President Consumer Insight Foods, Unilever |
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