Let's discuss an important part of your strategist's toolkit called hypothesis testing. This is a very useful framework when you're analyzing strategic options or strategic actions an organization might take. These are very popular for example among management consultants as an approach to making decisions. How does hypothesis testing work? Well the first is just recognize, any option that you might take is ultimately a hypothesis, a hypothesis about the value that action might create for the organization. So for example, it could be whether to pursue a merger and acquisition. It could be whether to make investments in capital, maybe a new production facility and the like. Each one of these strategic options is a hypothesis. So, the next thing you'd like to do is identify the core assumptions behind that hypothesis so, this can be everything from, do we actually have the necessary expertise to execute? On that option or that strategy. It could be do we have the distribution channels that are required to bring a new product to market, and the like.
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Once you've identified these core assumptions, then you want to conduct a series of thought experiments about what you know and what you need to know. What data do we currently have and what data do we ultimately need? This is very helpful for designing then a research plan to then allow you to go collect data and ultimately test the assumptions that you have behind a hypothesis. Once you've done this now you can hopefully make a more informed decision about whether to move forward on a strategic option or not.
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So to dive a little deeper, there are four basic or core assumptions that I think any hypothesis might want to consider. The first is what we call the Value Test, simply does it create value? This option in the way that we are presuming. Think, for example, of a new product launch. Typically, the value test would be something about the market. What does the market demand? What do customers want? Will it create value in the way that we hope?
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The execution test is whether we can actually bring it to market, whether we can actually execute on that option that we are considering here. This might be everything from, do we have the existing capabilities to be able to do this? It might have to do, do we have related complementary capabilities such as manufacturing or distribution and sales that are necessary to realize this strategic option? The third thing you want to think about is scale and perhaps we can execute, we can get a product to market for example. But can we then scale that up to a broader set of consumers or customers? So scale, while highly related to execution, can be a slightly different set of assumptions at the end of the day.
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Last but not least we have defensibility, this is a critical test that we want to think about. To what degree could others imitate us in the action that we're taking here. This gets back to kind of the core of a strategy and our considerations of competition. How are competitors likely to respond? Can they do what we're trying to do? Can we actually get some competitive advantage or differentiation from taking a strategic action versus others? Once again, once you've identified those assumptions and made them quite explicit, we want to go then through a series of thought experiments. Particularly, what do we know? What do we have data right now and we know fairly well. What do we not know, but could? Where we could go out and collect data and do research to get better understanding of our possibilities of executing on a strategic option. And then last but not least, what do we know, and really can't know? And this is the really world of true uncertainty, where we really don't know what the future state of the world's going to be and no amount of data collection is necessarily going to help us answer that. We need to recognize that explicitly. One, to prioritize where we collect data and the like, But also just to understand where we can have investments in terms of data collection, in terms of maybe different options within an option that we want to pursue. This get backs to this idea of flexibility that we've talked about in the past. So together, the four core assumptions, the three thought experiments, ultimately lead to a research plan that helps us then test the hypothesis that we have generated. And once we've done so, now we should be ready to make a decision about moving forward on a strategic option or not.

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