Page 252 - The Resilient Organization

Endnotes 237

experimentation can seek to validate the fundamental proposition or
the hypothesis, now more fully discovered, that forms the purpose of
the experimentation.
9. It is important to make the distinction that inventive experimentation
is about the discovery (or invention) of the new or heretofore
unknown rather than validation of any particular existing knowledge
claim. Hence serendipity can be properly and effectively harnessed to
inventive experimentation whereas it is reasonably seen as the enemy
of experimentation that is in search of validation. Control groups in
the latter pursuit are particularly designed to exclude effects that are
serendipitous.
10. Hanson (1967) describes these opportunities for discovery thus: (1)
Trip-over discovery: The experimenter has no theoretical expectation
for the discovery (accidental or serendipitous). (2) Back-into discovery:
The experimenter has a theoretical expectation against the discovery
(anomaly: Kuhnian paradigm shift). (3) Puzzle-over discovery: The
experimenter has the full theoretical expectation for the discovery (a
Eureka! moment).
11. It should be emphasized that such a statement is not an invitation to
“bad science” but rather an opening for inventive experimentation
that does not aim at the validational standards of scientific knowl-
edge but rather seeks to tease out inventive practices (that later may,
or may not, be validated as knowledge claims). See also Holmström,
Ketokivi, and Hameri (2009).
12. “Experimentation allows hypotheses to die in our stead” (Karl
Popper).