Peter Sims

In a roundabout way, a book like Little Bets is why I read non-fiction. I certainly didn't love it but it forced me to think. The author cherry picks from a group of modern day all-star companies and CEOs for nearly 100% of his examples (I mean, I love Pixar too but aren't there other, less popular examples?) and the prose is a little too fake-sounding at times, but there's some good advice here if you take the time to draw it out.

The best bits by far come from its title, Little Bets, and show more its closely-related cousin, Small Wins. The idea is to gauge a way forward in a rapidly changing market by placing small bets here and there and then getting real feedback on what works. Similarly, one can build towards that big bet by establishing a series of smaller wins along the way. show less

Good information, though the writing didn't really captivate me. It does make me want to read more about Pixar and HP. The Frank Gehry section really could have used some photos.

Feel free to skip stuff, for example, I already knew the growth mindset work from Prof. Carol Dweck. And I didn't find the fMRI studies of music improvisation very convincing.

Read it for the "big bet" failures at HP and how they learned from that, plus the Pixar stuff, "We never finish a film, we just release it." show more This all fits into my understanding of product releases as conversations with the customer. With every release, from alpha to version 13, you need to know what question you are asking and what you want to learn. show less

It’s a fun book to read, and I’m finding it inspiring – promoting the (reasearch validated) idea that successful creativity and change doesn’t come from top down planning, but from having an open mind, experimentation, play, flexibility, a willingness to fail, and a willingness to capitalise on small wins… there’s a lot to think about and a lot to apply, privately and professionally (from my blog post at http://figgles1.wordpress.com/2011/06/04/reading-little-bets/)

This little but very interesting book proposes the idea of making little bets that have the potential advance an organization with less risk. Even if the little bets result in failure, the organizations learns from it and continues to improve. He provides many real-world examples, including Chris Rock and Pixar.