counterintuitive-testslisted

# Counterintuitive Tests — invert the obvious, then watch behaviour Two moves: (1) deliberately generate the ideas that sound *wrong*, because the sensible ideas are already taken; (2) never trust what people *say* about them — run a cheap, reversible experiment and watch what they *do*. ## Why the obvious idea is the wrong default Logical optimisation converges: every competent competitor finds the same "best practice," so it stops being an advantage. The remaining opportunities are the moves that don't survive a rational business case — which is exactly why nobody has tried them. "Doesn't make sense" is not a reason to reject an idea; it's a reason it might still be available. - **Red Bull** launched a small, expensive can of bad-tasting drink. Every logical signal said fail. The "wrongness" *was* the positioning — it must do something. - **Raising the price** sometimes raises sales (it changes the signal — see costly-signaling). - **Removing** features/options/steps often beats adding them (paradox of choice). ## Why you must test behaviour, not opinions > People don't think what they feel, don't say what they think, and don't do what they say. Surveys and focus groups capture *post-hoc rationalisations*, not causes. Nobody in a focus group asked for Red Bull. Stated preference is cheap talk; **revealed preference** (what they actually clicked, bought, kept) is the only honest data. So your job isn't to *ask* whether the counterintuitive idea works — it's to *expose