7 Experiment Playbooks for Product Innovation (100% Free)
The business world is finally waking up to experiments' power to de-risk product ideas, so what’s in your experiment toolbox? It’s good to have a variety of experimentation methods at your disposal.
These PDFs of experimentation methods and approaches are an excellent way to build your personal innovation testing toolset. Here are the top experiment method playbooks from the most influential innovation sources.
1. Validation Guide by Board of Innovation
Length: 92 pages
This one is so good it’s hard to believe it’s free. It contains everything you need, from the mindset to the process, to the methods you need to validate (or better, invalidate) your experiments. Use this to get the product team motivated to start experimenting.
2. The Experiment Library by Strategyzer
Length: 2 pages
This playbook is short but sweet. It’s based on David Bland’s excellent Testing Business Ideas book. Use this resource to get a quick overview of possible experiment methods.
3. A Compendium of Innovation Methods by Nesta
Length: 71 pages
This resource has a lot of great case studies on different innovation techniques. in lots of different industries. Use this to build buy-in for experiments with senior leadership.
https://www.nesta.org.uk/report/compendium-innovation-methods
4. Experiment Playbook by Lean Apps
Length: 34 pages
This playbook is rock solid with a broad variety of experiment methods and also guidance on running multiple experiments. Use this to get better at running cycles of experiments.
5. The Real Startup Playbook by Kromatic
Length: 162 pages
This full-length book is for founders and innovators who want to master the lean startup process. It contains many methods and goes into great detail on how to run the experiment methods. Use this asset to build an entrepreneurial mindset at every company level.
6. Your Guide to Scaling Product-Led Innovation by Amplitude & Reforge
Length: 73 pages
This one is more of a maturity-building playbook than a method playbook, but it’s packed with insight. The PDF deals mainly with A/B testing and organizations with the traffic to get statistical significance. Use this asset to take your experimentation maturity to the corporate level.
https://amplitude.com/resources/product-led-experimentation-guide
7. The Landscape of Innovation Approaches by States of Change
Length: 1 page + links
The PDF here is quite basic, but the site where you download has links to learn more about each method. Use this to get a birds-eye view of which experiment methods to learn more about.
https://states-of-change.org/resources/landscape-of-innovation-approaches
Bonus: Experiment Cards
Experiment methods are useless without a hypothesis. Check out this free template I designed specifically for assumption testing, a faster way to design experiments.
Is there an innovation/experimentation/testing playbook we missed? Leave a comment with an experimentation playbook we missed.
