Creating a Culture of Experimentation: Ideas and Best Practices

Scott Cook Bharath Kadaba Joe Hernandez Carol Howe

Leaders Champion a Grand Challenge

Create new businesses that improve the financial lives of Indians

150M+ farmers Contribute 25% of GDP 60% of population dependent on agriculture

Help improve the financial lives of Indian farmers who are struggling to make ends meet

Small empowered team chooses “uncomfortably” narrow problem to solve for farmers…

Problem: Who should I sell the produce to in order to realize the “best” price? Solution: Personalized market price information and connection to buyer via daily text messages

**Fasal** Okra Padra 95-105 Agent 9765590632 Baroda 00-115 Agent 9354240167

Team adopts experiments as a way to make all decisions

•  20+ Major Experiments

•  Overcame many “death threats” from management by staying lean

•  Always passing impossible toll gates!

Manually sent daily market prices via text messages – test in market within days!

Fake-O-Backend

+20% farm income

2010 2011 2012

Customer Benefit 1.2M Active farmers

Leaders install experimentation culture and systems …to remove speed bumps in experimenters’ way

New tools so teams can run many experiments without talking to Legal at all Legal

•  Mindset à Behavior •  Democratize Action •  Becomes How You Work

Leaders install experimentation culture and systems …to remove speed bumps in experimenters’ way

New tools so teams can run many experiments without talking to Legal at all Legal

•  Mindset à Behavior •  Democratize Action •  Becomes How You Work

• 5- 30K max # of testers for 2 months • Testers understand they are

participating in research • Prototype does not actually complete

transactions or collect user data • Our data stewardship principles apply • Collect only the info necessary to conduct test • We do not collect credit card info • Participants learn about pilot via

communication to the gen public (and not targeted to any gov’t employees or agencies)

• Testers may be given small token, if applicable, for their time

• Complete patent brainstorm before sharing publicly

Prototype

SnapTax

Amazing I woke up about an hour ago. Drank some coffee, talked on the phone and filed my taxes. Way to make filing no big deal at all, TurboTax. -– I like games.com, 1/20.2012

Unbelievably Easy A five year old could do your taxes for you. Or a monkey. You choose - gsteve81, 2/12/2012 Great App So easy, so fast, might sound odd but this is one of my favorite apps that I only get to use once a year. – Jamie Cox, 2/23.2012 Freaking Amazing!!!!! Wife and I completely shocked at the ease and simplicity of the app! We usually cringe at tax time but this app made us not want to get a divorce preparing our taxes. Highly recommend for singles and married alike! – study76, 2/17/2012

Leaders pull insights from successes and failures

Document capture app for TurboTax Online

Document capture app for TurboTax Online Start-to-Finish Tax Preparation App for Simple Filers