Rule Developing Experimentation

Rule-developing experimentation or RDE is a systematized solution-oriented business process of experimentation that designs, tests, and modifies alternative ideas, packages, products, or services in a disciplined way using experimental design, so that the developer and marketer discover what appeals to the customer, even if the customer can't articulate the need, much less the solution.

Rule-developing experimentation was developed by Moskowitz Jacobs Inc. in cooperation with Professor Jerry (Yoram) Wind (Wharton School of Business at University of Pennsylvania). The term was initially coined by Howard R. Moskowitz and Alex Gofman in a series of articles and conference papers. The paradigm for systematic design and developing/using the rules in various applications was formalized in their book Selling Blue Elephants: How to Make Great Products That People Want Before They Even Know They Want Them (Wharton School Publishing, 2007).

Some aspects of RDE have previously been used during the past 25 years for the design and optimization of physical products, product development concepts, marketing communications, as well as packaging. Beginning in 1982, RDE was variously described in different books and articles by a number of different terms (e.g., product optimization), depending on the product area and the topics (e.g.). RDE has been effectively utilized over the years by many of Fortune 500 companies around the world.

Initially, RDE was used for product optimization followed by message optimization for advertising, promotions, etc. New applications of RDE include NDP "NDP is not defined. Could it be a typo for new product development (NPD)? combinatorial innovation, multivariate landing page optimization (MVLPO), political elections, stock markets, crisis communications management, package design, magazine cover, flyer optimization, social science, public policies, etc. – virtually any field that involves people decisions and choices, emotional perceptions of messages and other stimuli. RDE is the foundation for the new science of MindGenomics modeled on the emerging science of genomics and the technology of informatics.

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