Steve Levitt and John List Teach Experimentation to MBA Students

From the Financial Times:

“The level of experimentation [at big businesses such as United Airlines] is abysmal,” says Prof List. “These firms do not take full advantage of feedback opportunities they’re presented with. After seeing example after example, we sat down and said, ‘We have to try to do something to stop this.’ One change we could make is to teach 75 to 100 of the best MBA students in the world how to think about feedback opportunities and how to think about designing their own field experiments to learn something that can make their company better.”

The two economists decided to team up to develop a course for [University of Chicago] Booth [Business School] students on “Using Experiments in Firms” – the first time either had taught at the business school.

This is an interesting middle ground between conventional science (done by professors) and what I have done a lot of (self-experimentation to solve my own problems — e.g., sleep better). I’m (a) trying to solve my own problems and (b) it’s not a job. Conventional scientists are (a) trying to solve other people’s problems and (b) it is a job. The MBA students will be taught experimentation that involves their own problems — well, their own company’s problems — and it is a job.

One important effect of this course, if the whole idea catches on, could be a cultural shift: A growing belief that experimentation is good and that failure to experiment is bad. Some of my first self-experiments involved acne. I was a grad student. When I told my dermatologist what I’d done — my results showed that a medicine he’d prescribed didn’t work — he looked unhappy. “Why did you do that?” he asked.

The Levitt/List course has a Martin-Luther-esque ring to it. Science: Not just for other people.

Thanks to Nadav Manham.