I watched a movie recently, "The Andromeda Strain". If you haven’t seen it, it’s a virus 'outbreak movie' where the stars of the movie are scientists and need to fight an unknown virus.
"The Andromeda Strain" (2008) is a virus outbreak movie based on a 1969 'hard science' novel by Michael Crichton.
But I don’t think the scientists are the stars, I think they have a relatively easy job - why?
They actually just come up with theories about what will kill the virus (various thought bubbles or hypotheses) and then they approach a whizz bang testing computer and actually just talk to it, as in;
- Scientist: "Computer, test: sample xyz with chemical abc and report on outcome"
and a few moments later the testing robot reports back
- Computer: "Outcome: virus was affected <this way, that way> by chemical <abc>."
EASY!
There is a bit more to it as they expand on why they try various things and why it did or didn’t work, but in the movie the key resource is TIME and the tests are so fast they can afford to run countless tests making them cheap and it just being a matter of time before they find something that works.
Many low cost tests ('fast' in this case) made their job far easier.
From the empirical information discovered its easy to decide the next step - if it killed the virus without doing any other serious harm, release it. Simple!
Making a habit of collecting information like this can make your decision making simple as well, especially where there is some high level of time or money involved or something you’re not sure will work ( a new product, service, piece of equipment, person... )
In the absence of a billion dollar super computer testing robot, try little swings (where you risk less).
So,
- test feedback makes a decision obvious
- the cheapest/fastest feedback you can find gives you access to better decisions
- finding cheap ways to test your offerings before you invest heavily will give you a competitive advantage
Check out my encounter with an 'Air Hockey' playing robot here [link]