If he had viewed the results as finished goods, he probably would have given up after a few tries, concluding that incandescent lighting was just a bad idea. Today's businesses can profit by Edison s example. When companies skip the experimentation phase, they in effect use the marketplace or their own organizations as a lab. Promising new products and innovative business practices are launched before they're proven seaworthy. No wonder two-thirds of reengineering efforts fail and fewer than 900 of the 16,000 products introduced in 1993 are still on the shelves .
People fail to experiment.
Companies make a much costlier mistake when they fail to experiment. Instead of beta testing the idea in some small part of the organization or market place, they do a full blown implementation. An experiment is a trial run. You should be trying to figure out why reengineering isn't for you, why customers won't want your new portable widget. People fail to get valid feedback.