If you make some sort of change in your business, how can you be confident that any effects you observe after the change were really driven by the change you made? We previously discussed how a "difference-in-difference" approach can help businesses test their decisions.
Here's an article from the Financial Times that highlights a new class in Chicago's MBA program - "Using Experiments in Firms." The class was taught by economists Steven Levitt (of Freakonomics fame) and John List .
Wow...Using data to drive decision-making, now there's a quantum leap forward in management practice. This seems like a basic application of the scientific method that (presumably) everyone learned in elementary school. I am unimpressed.
ReplyDeleteIt's not just about using data to drive decision-making (not so impressive). It's about how to design your data generation and gathering to move from observing correlations to concluding causality.
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