Unlock Breakthrough Ideas with Peter Sims' Little Bets: How Small Discoveries Lead to Big Results

Pasquale Mellone: I loved this book for the simple and effective strategies, backed up by examples, you can apply. Also it's particularly interesting the bibliography with great references if you want to further expand on the topics. Some of the examples in the book tend to digress but other than that this is definitely a book I would recommend to entrepreneurs and business owners

United Kingdom on Aug 03, 2020

StefanoStefano: Libro di 200 pagine, in inglese, molto scorrevole e adatto a che non ha una conoscenza perfetta dell' inglese. Alcune parole sono abbastanza specifiche quindi potrà capitarvi di doverle cercare sul dizionario.
Mi è piaciuto molto perché vengono analizzati gli aspetti del business da un punto di vista mentale: è curioso notare che dietro a ogni grande impresa o dietro a ogni grande successo in realtà vi sono molti piccoli step successivi, spesso anche alcuni fallimentari,che complessivamente dopo il passare del tempo portano a una grande impresa. E' interessante il tema secondo cui è indispensabile fallire anche più volte, sperimentare ed essere molto flessibili mentalmente per arrivare alle idee più ingegnose.
Consiglio a tutti gli amanti del business, a chi lavora in proprio e a chi vuole continuamente rinnovarsi e reinventarsi.

Italy on Aug 19, 2017

Dr. Peter Davies: This is an excellent short book. It's divides innovators into conceptualists and experimenters. This book is very much on the side of the experimenters- it sees overarching concepts as something that can be useful- but which are often unhelpful.

The book illustrates well the idea that multiple small steps towards a goal, our even just taken out of curiosity to see what will happen, are usually the best ways to make progress. Most progress comes from small steps- that cost little, don't take long- and are basically "little bets." A little bet is a diversion you can take that may or may not work, but the worst you'll lose is some small amount of money, and a bit of time. Most ideas don't work out as planned- and often the big idea or concept emerges as an outcome of what starts off as quite a small idea or project. The key thing seems to be to know what problem you are dealing with- and to break it down into small workable chunks.

The world is largely divided between conceptual thinkers who then work out the details, and other people who work with small chunks, and eventually discover what they are really a part of. Little bets offers something to both groups. The...

United Kingdom on May 19, 2014

Mikolaj Pietrzyk: This book is not a game changer, nor does it bring about breakthrough ideas, but at least it does not pretend to do so. That's already a merit. Even the title is somewhat modest and humble especially when compared to shouting headlines of some top selling business books. I'm even tempted to call the writing itself modest. That's rare and worth apprising. It feels good to be treated seriously as a reader.
In a nutshell, Sims' book refreshes a simple idea of how productive and valuable it can be to work in small steps. He calls these steps "little bets" to illustrate risk management opportunities coming with gradual development rather than big bets of putting every resource behind unproven ideas. In doing so Sims accomplishes to address two objectives. Firstly, he manages to convincingly combine the examples backing up his reasoning from as diverse backgrounds as military operations (counterinsurgency ops in Iraq), animated movies production (Pixar) and some more. He successfully avoids a trap of putting different examples artificially bind together. Secondly, by reviving little steps approach what I guess is a concept as old as humanity, he brings back to live some worthy advice...

United Kingdom on May 26, 2013

Jim L. Battin: As the author points out, `the certainty of uncertainty is becoming more evident with the accelerating pace of technological change.' As a result, traditional approaches to problem solving, while still valuable when much is known, are making way to an approach called `little bets' when much is not known and requires problem finding. The book describes the characteristics of this trend, and provides strategies that we may use to benefit from changing our mind sets and way of thinking.

Little bets are concrete actions taken to discover, test, and develop ideas that are achievable and affordable. They are particularly valuable when trying to navigate amid uncertainty, create something new, or attend to open-ended problems. In today's environment these situations are on the increase.

Fundamental to the little bets approach is that we: 1) learn by doing, 2) immerse ourselves in how things work from the ground up, 3) use the insights we gathered throughout the process, and 4) reorient ourselves to become more flexible in pursuit of larger goals and aspirations.

Practicing little bets frees us up from the expectation that we should know everything we need to know...

United States on Dec 07, 2012

Ali: I really truly recommend this book for anyone in any position of leadership or entrepreneurship. At first glance the concepts seem focused at product creators and small business owners however I think there are takeaways for anyone in any field. The idea of betting small, failing fast and learning little bits from lots of people are amazing concepts that apply to life so much of life.

I found all of the studies cited incredibly informative. Especially the one on how people perceive luck and the micro-loan nobel prize winner. Little bets is not a step by step methodology on any specific task or working field. It is a philosophy to be used as an approach to many tasks in life and especially product creation. It can be compared closely to the different between Waterfall development and Agile development. It then extends further into making all innovation, management, marketing more agile.

Will definitely be purchasing copies for colleagues and friends.

Canada on Oct 22, 2012

John W. Pearson: "The writers for the humor publication the Onion, known for its hilarious headlines, propose roughly six hundred possibilities for eighteen headlines each week," reports Peter Sims in his fascinating book, Little Bets. That's just a three percent success rate for headline writers. Yikes. Or maybe not yikes.

Subtitled, "How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge From Small Discoveries," we quickly learn--through dozens of mini-case studies--that innovation comes through hard work, experimentation and bosses who are cheerleaders for failure. (And I would also guess innovation happens with a healthy dose of weekly staff encouragement, motivation and hoopla-type fun. I mean, what if your best headline ideas were ranked 19th each week?)

Example: Comedian Chris Rock tests, tests and re-tests every joke--and every word--for up to six months (or even a year) at his local comedy club before he takes his hour-long act on the road or on national television.

Example: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has built an "experimental discovery mentality" so that "whether or not employees are doing so is a part of their performance reviews."

The author adds, "Like Chris Rock, Bezos has accepted...

United States on May 14, 2011