24 November 2025
Worden we slimmer of juist dommer door AI? De inzichten van Klöpping, Scherder en Online Dialogue
Reflectie op Klöpping × Scherder door Simon Buil (Data-analist bij Online Dialogue)
When companies try to scale up experimentation, they often find that corporate culture is the biggest obstacle. Fixed patterns, beliefs and values make it difficult or impossible to achieve a culture of experimentation.
Common challenges have to do with the mindset in the organization, the structure of the organization, the leadership model, how decisions are made, what behaviors are rewarded, and how things are done. This article is the first in a series on conditions for a culture of experimentation.
1. Three mindsets to achieve a culture of experimentation
2. Organizational structure for an experimental culture
3. How leadership creates a culture of experimentation
4. Centre of Excellence versus other organizational models
When it comes to the mindset within an organization, three mindsets are essential to achieving a culture of experimentation; an experimentation mindset, a learning mindset and a growth mindset.
Let's start with a experiment mindset. There are many explanations of what an experiment mindset is. For me, an experiment mindset is thinking like a scientist. This means being curious, questioning assumptions, creating testable hypotheses, conducting experiments that produce evidence, and analyzing cause and effect. An experiment mindset helps us get to know our customers better, reduce risk and improve outcomes.
At the highest level of experimentation maturity, the entire organization has this mindset and approach.
However, many companies are not yet that far along. One of the biggest problems is that only a small percentage of ideas turn into successful experiments. That means most ideas don't improve anything. Since many companies are output-driven, experimentation can feel like a waste of time, which slows down the entire operation.
Let's say the average success rate of experiments is 25%. Imagine an organization that focuses exclusively on output, and you want everyone to experiment so that 75% of all output is discarded. This is quite a mismatch. The company wants high output, but 75% is discarded.
If a company is focused on outcomes, that is, positive changes for customers and the business, then implementing only winning or non-losing ideas is perfect logic.
Because many ideas are discarded, an experiment mindset does require humility. It is hard to maintain a big ego when everyone in the company can look at the data and see all the great ideas that ultimately resulted in a losing experiment.
Therefore, another requirement for a culture of experimentation is the acceptance of failure. In other words, everyone has a learning mindset needed.
With a learning mindset, you don't see losing or undecided tests as failures. Instead, you can learn a lot from each experiment about what works and doesn't work for different user groups. Combining learnings from experiments helps to get a complete picture of the kinds of experiences that do and don't resonate, leading to new hypotheses, new experiments, and ultimately winning tests.
So turning each experiment into knowledge is essential for success. Inconclusive and losing tests cannot be avoided, so consider them a crucial part of making progress. Instead of fearing a losing experiment, negative experiment results should be celebrated as a way to keep customers and the company from a damaging release. Many innovations have come from failures. So failed experiments are inevitable and valuable.
This is possible only if failures are accepted. If losses are penalized in some way, as in personal assessments, it is better not to have evidence of results. So people don't do experiments.
Also, if managers place too much emphasis on winning rather than improving decision-making and mitigating risk, this can encourage employees to focus on familiar solutions, short-term gains, or playing up results. For example, I saw an organization that wanted its employees to experiment, but placed too much emphasis on winning. This resulted in employees determining the KPI of their experiments only after the test was done. If you choose the right KPI after your experiment, you almost always have a win.
Unfortunately, learning from failure can be a challenge to manage. Failure can lead to embarrassment and expose essential gaps in knowledge. This makes it challenging to obtain this mindset.
(You could argue that a learning mindset is part of an experimenting mindset. But yes, you could also argue how inconclusive and rejected hypotheses are valued in science).
Finally, a growth mindset essential to make a change in the organization. You may already be familiar with Carol Dweck's book Mindset, in which she distinguishes two types of mindsets; a fixed mindset and a growth mindset.
People with a fixed mindset believe that their intelligence, talents and personalities are fixed traits that cannot grow. They believe they are born with a certain level of ability or skill. When it comes to change, they feel that things must go a certain way and get frustrated when they fail because they see this as their shortcomings. Therefore, they do not like to be challenged and do not like new things.
Someone with a growth mindset believes that their basic skills can be developed through dedication and hard work - brains and talent are just the starting point. They see failures and challenges as a way to grow.
Achieving a culture of experimentation requires change in the organization. Those with a fixed mindset will quickly struggle and resist change. If a key stakeholder has a fixed mindset, try to understand it. Often people who seem stuck have reasons for their attitudes. By understanding them, you can create a win-win situation.
For example, someone with a fixed mindset is under great time pressure. By making sure he doesn't get extra work (better yet, if the change helps him save time), he may be more open to the change. Or someone may be worried about achieving his goals. If you show that experimenting helps him achieve them, he will be more open to working together.
In short, an experimentation culture requires an experimentation mindset. Everyone needs to think like a scientist. Further, non-winning experiments will be common, so it is crucial to be resilient to this and see it as a learning opportunity, which requires a learning mindset. And finally, for change to succeed, people must have a growth mindset.
You can get to the best situation step by step through change management. But changing the mindset of an entire organization does take time.
Mindset was the first of the four conditions for achieving a culture of experimentation. Curious about the next three? Keep an eye on our website or stay informed by signing up for our newsletter Or follow us at LinkedIn or Instagram.
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