Joseph Wright of Derby, ‘An Experiment on a Bird in the Air-Pump’

'Negative results are just what I want. They’re just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don’t.'
Thomas Edison

My father’s idea of a great Saturday afternoon was watching seamless sport on TV. With an Embassy on the go and a mug of black Nescafe at his side, he’d transition from athletics to speedway to rugby league with equal attentiveness.

Though not a betting man, Dad spent a good deal of time watching horse racing. This made quite an impression on me as a young child. I developed a solitary game that involved running endless rings round the living room coffee table. I’d gallop in circles at great speed, with an occasional sharp slap to one hip, commentating as I went in an approximation of the patrician tones of Peter O’Sullevan.

My game was pretty rudimentary. But there was not a lot going on in the 1970s.

Sadly my child jockey phase came to a disastrous end. On one particular race day I determined to gallop at an even greater than usual tempo. Round and round the coffee table I went, hollering encouragement and instruction to myself at the top of my voice. All of a sudden I became so dizzy that I saw stars, fell over and incurred a gruesome gash on my forehead.

When later that day I returned from Oldchurch Hospital in bandages, my father called me to one side. Having ruined his afternoon of TV sport, I thought I was in trouble. But I did not receive the expected rebuke. Instead he just asked:

‘What did you learn from all this, Jim?’

In our youth we are instinctively experimental. We engage in all manner of diverse activities - the random and inappropriate, the silly and superficial, the ill-conceived and misguided. But if we manage to emerge from our trials in one piece, they can contribute to our understanding of life.

When I played rugby at school, I learned how to overcome physical fear. When I took mad dog Dillon for a walk, I learned about social anxiety. When I attended heavy metal gigs at the Hammersmith Odeon, I learned that double denim is not a good look. And when I drank whisky with Caz and Thommo, I learned to avoid dark spirits.

Experimentation is similarly valuable in the world of work.

When I had a job cold calling, I learned that polite prevarication doesn’t sell. When I was hired to do filing, I learned that someone needed to invent cloud computing. When I was a focus group moderator, I learned how to direct conversation. And when I was employed on a building site, I learned that The Guardian isn’t welcome in every setting.

'Observation is a passive science, experimentation an active science.'
Claude Bernard

I read in The Guardian recently (I wasn’t on a building site at the time) about a study carried out by Professor Dashun Wang, with colleagues at Northwestern University, into the ‘hot streaks’ experienced by artists and scientists at the peaks of their careers: periods when they found themselves ‘on a roll’ in terms of innovation and output. (12 September, 2021, ‘Scientists identify key conditions to set up a creative ‘hot streak’’)

First the researchers identified the purple patches experienced by thousands of leading painters, film directors and scientists by reviewing auction prices, IMDb ratings and research citations.

Then they used Artificial Intelligence to assess the diversity of the individuals’ work at different points in their careers. Their algorithms reviewed the variety of the artists’ brush strokes and subject matter; of the directors’ plots and casts; and of the scientists’ research topics.

The team found that all three career types engaged in more diverse output immediately before they hit a 'hot streak.' And then the ‘hot streak’ itself was characterised by a narrower, more focused working style.

‘There’s experimentation, and then there’s implementation based on what you have learned through experimentation.’
Prof Dashun Wang (writing in the journal Nature Communications)

The Guardian article cited the example of the film director Peter Jackson:

‘His hugely successful Lord of the Rings trilogy came after an eclectic range of movies such as the sci-fi comedy horror Bad Taste, the puppet film Meet the Feebles and the drama Heavenly Creatures.'

There’s a lesson here for us all in the business world. Of course, we should recognise and reward ‘hot streaks’: those magnificent spells when an individual or team is creating output of consistent quality at high velocity. But we should also understand that these fertile and productive periods can only occur if we allow preceding time and space for experimentation. Incomparable implementation proceeds from excellent experimentation.

'No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.'
Albert Einstein

I can’t quite remember how I replied to my father’s question. What had I learned from my bloody tumble? I guess, reflecting on it now, I discovered that if you spend too much time running round in circles, you end up falling over.

'I fall to pieces
Each time I see you again.
I fall to pieces.
How can I be just your friend?
You want me to act like we've never kissed.
You want me to forget,
Pretend we've never met.
And I've tried and I've tried
But I haven't yet.
You walk by and I fall to pieces.’
Patsy Cline,'I Fall To Pieces' (H Cochran / H Howard)

No. 349