“Where Are the Grown-Ups?”

JP Castlin on Complexity, what it means for your business, and how to deal with it via safe-to-fail experimentation.

Originally planned to be Episode 1 of Season 1 (as per audio), becomes S02e02 because we now have 2 full intro episodes and can't have Episode 0 or Season Zero on the podcast platforms.

Next week, we'll talk about Experimental Economics—but in this episode, JP Castlin talks to us about complexity, how understanding complexity is relevant for running a business, and how it all relates to experimentation.

About Business Games: www.business-games.ai/about/

Contents

Add ~1 min to the timestamps after 11th minute mark.

• Introduction [00:00]
• On Complexity: A Primer [03:55]
• On Systems: In Nature and Organizations—Ordered Clear, Complicated, Complex, and Chaotic [04:38]
• A Marketing Example of a Dispositional System [06:14]
• …and a Chaotic System [06:53]
• On Experimenting in Different Kinds of Systems [07:09]
• On Two Types of Uncertainty: Epistemic (Knowledge-based) and Aleatory (Inherent and Irreducible) [08:11]
• On Contexts and More on Quantum Mechanics Vs Newtonian Physics [12:02]
• On How to Deal with Uncertainty in Complexity [13:49]
• Fail-safe Vs Safe-to-fail: Marvel Vs Blumhouse [15:15]
• Experimentation in Various Contexts [19:13]
• Online Vs Offline, and Operational Efficiency Vs Strategic Choice [20:28]
• On Eternal Boiling, Premature Convergence, A/B Testing, and Local Optima [23:46]
• System Has Its Own Behaviour: Ants and Colonies [26:52]
• Strategy and (Equi-) Probability [27:53]
• On Not Getting Disheartened [30:58]
• On Boundary Conditions, Company-specific Metrics, Scaling and Dampening [31:57]
• On Corporate Versus SME, Small Versus Big [34:28]
• On Product Versus Service [36:40]
• On Services, Complexity, Causality, and Defensive Decision-making [39:24]
• On the Value of Consultants in Complexity [46:12]
• On Cost-out Versus Value-add, Start-ups and Scaling [49:36]
• On Start-ups and Proprietary Data [51:09]
• On Deliberate Versus Emergent Strategy [52:54]
• (More) on How to Deal with Complex Problems in Practice [55:02]
• The Homework [57:39]
• JP’s Own Work as It Relates to Experiments, Strategy, and Complexity [01:00:17]
• On the Key Takeaways: Both Jokingly and Seriously [01:07:18]
• On Emotions in Experimentation [01:10:24]

Links to JP’s Work

• Substack: Strategy in Praxis https://strategyinpraxis.substack.com/
• WWW: JP Castlin https://jpcastlin.com/
• Twitter: @JPCastlin https://twitter.com/JPCastlin
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jpcastlin/
• MarketingWeek: https://www.marketingweek.com/author/jp-castlin/

Articles

• Laplace & Demons - Strategy in Praxis | (substack.com)
• Bets & Blockbusters - Strategy in Praxis | (substack.com)
• Marc Pritchard knows better than to believe P&G can act like a startup | (marketingweek.com)
• Where are the grown-ups? | LinkedIn

Some Other Links Mentioned

• Epistemic vs. Aleatory uncertainty - apppm (dtu.dk)
• Cynefin Framework | Wikipedia
• Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters | Amazon
• How Brands Grow
• Cognitive Edge | The Cynefin Company