Learning by Experimenting

Full course description

Firms and organisations are always looking for innovative practices to improve their performance. But how do they know that a new approach is really better than the old practice? A new marketing program, changes in human resources tools, new training programs, changes at schools or new approaches to combat traffic jams or fight crime: all have to deal with the question to what extent they will really improve outcomes and what elements are responsible for this result. This requires systematic comparison and therefore experimentation is the best way to learn. Recently new tools have been developed to learn by experimentation.

In this skills training the full process of a systematic field experiments - that in practice can take several years - is simulated in two weeks. Students can - individually or in small groups - choose topics of their interest and develop and implement a program to experiment with change.