Strategy as science: Embracing an experimental approach

Good strategy starts with clarity, confidence, and a well-articulated plan. You define the target, allocate resources, and execute. Or so I thought.

That approach did not work when I was leading the Dubai Chamber of Commerce.

Chambers of Commerce are among the oldest institutions in the business world, with a history spanning more than 400 years. They are trusted, highly connected, and deeply embedded in their economies. Yet they are also vulnerable.

Digital platforms have disrupted their role as intermediaries. Regulatory reforms have reduced their guaranteed income streams. And members increasingly question what they are paying for or whether they should pay at all.

For years, these challenges were discussed at conferences and board meetings across the global chamber community. Everyone agreed that change was needed.

However, very few knew how to make it happen. The conventional response was always the same: commission a consultant, redesign the service portfolio, and roll out a transformation plan. We tried that. It didn’t work.

Should you experiment with your strategy?

What ultimately made the difference was not better planning, but a willingness to experiment.

This was an approach I learned from the start-up world and thinkers such as the noted tech entrepreneur Steve Blank.

During our early efforts, one issue kept troubling me. Most of the chamber’s income traditionally comes from its members, who are local businesses, because regulation and licensing make membership mandatory.

But what about companies outside our jurisdiction? International businesses were already benefiting from the chamber’s networks, information, and credibility. Yet they paid nothing.

Inside my organisation, the prevailing belief was simple: international companies value what we do, but they will never pay for it, because they are used to getting it for free. I wasn’t convinced.

But how could I convince others? Instead of debating the question, I decided to turn it into an experiment.

We avoided starting with the question: “What should our international offering be?”

Maximise learning rather than scale

Instead, we designed a series of services for international businesses and priced them. The objective was not to maximise scale or revenue. It was learning.

We wanted to understand what international businesses genuinely struggled with when entering a new market, whether the chamber’s services could meaningfully address those challenges, and whether the value created was strong enough to justify a fee.

Importantly, we kept the experiment small and quick. It had a limited scope, limited resources, and clear success criteria. That alone represented a cultural shift.

The experiment focused on companies looking to expand into Dubai and the wider region. Instead of offering generic information, much of which was already available online, the idea was to design a hypothetical offering that provided structured access to relevant government entities, introductions to vetted local partners, and practical guidance on market entry, regulation, and set up.

Crucially, it also came with a clearly defined price point. Nothing was fully built at this stage; the objective was to test demand and willingness to pay before committing resources.

To implement our experiment, we started by assembling a diverse team and selecting the customers we wanted to target. In phase two, we brainstormed exactly what we wanted to offer and selected the ideas we felt to be most promising.

Next, we developed business models for these ideas and formulated hypotheses. It was then time to test the idea.

We presented the proposed services, including scope, outcomes, and pricing, directly to the businesses we had identified.

How to refine your strategy

Their responses determined the next step: some concepts were refined, others were abandoned, and a small number showed sufficient traction to justify further development.

One of the hypotheses we tested was that small and medium-sized agribusinesses from overseas that already engaged with Dubai through our international offices would be willing to pay for a structured market-entry package if it addressed practical barriers to growth.

We designed a simple prototype offering that bundled regulatory guidance, market access support, and business development services, and offered it for a limited period at a discounted price.

The proposition was shared with the defined group and we observed their response. Many did not engage, but enough did to help us refine the package, pivoting towards the services they wanted.

The most important outcome was not financial. It was a fundamental change in how we thought about value.

The experiment was deliberately short and inexpensive. It lasted for a brief period, cost little, and was designed to gauge interest and behaviour rather than generate revenue.

While many international businesses did not engage, that in itself was a critical insight. It forced us to confront a reality we had previously avoided: exposure and appreciation do not automatically translate into value.

Those who engaged did so quickly because the proposition addressed very specific pain points. It reduced uncertainty, saved time, and provided a solution they could not easily secure on their own. The response pattern revealed far more than any survey or workshop ever could.

Two insights stood out. First, willingness to pay proved to be a far more reliable indicator of value than stated interest or positive feedback.

Second, the experiment began to shift how the organisation understood its role. Instead of seeing the chamber primarily as a provider of information and connections, we started to view it as a facilitator of market entry, capable of designing targeted services that solve real business problems.

That shift did not come from a traditional strategy exercise. It emerged from running our experiment and learning from the data.

Overcome your fear of failure as a strategist

Not everything succeeded. In fact, most of our experiments failed. Some elements of the service were over-designed, while others proved unnecessary.

The chamber’s internal processes, built for scale and compliance, were not well-suited to experimentation. At times, governance structures slowed the decision-making process more than they protected it. But those structural limits were revealing.

They highlighted which parts of the organisation were optimised for stability, and which needed to evolve if innovation was to become repeatable.

More importantly, this marked the beginning of a more systematic process to innovate both the chamber’s services and its underlying business model.

This experience fundamentally reshaped how I think about leadership in legacy organisations. It did not just change how I manage, but also how the organisation learns.

I stopped seeing experimentation as an operational tool and began to understand it as a leadership responsibility, one that creates the conditions for learning at an individual and organisational level.

As both CEO and researcher, it revealed to me that in established organisations, progress comes less from resolving uncertainty and more from testing assumptions in a disciplined way.

By designing experiments, reflecting on outcomes, and iterating, we were able to create shared understanding, build internal capability, and reduce risk over time.

Learning was no longer accidental or informal; it became intentional, collective, and embedded in decision-making.

Experimentation did not replace strategy. It became the mechanism through which strategy could emerge with greater confidence and credibility.

This article was originally published by Warwick Business School in The Thinking Executive newsletter.

Further reading:

Four keys to using big data to unlock better strategy

How to build a resilient organisation

Overcome three barriers to successful strategy

Three steps to involve front line staff in open strategy

Hamad Buamim is a board chair, non-executive director, and former CEO with nearly three decades of leadership across financial services, economic development, and hospitality. He is Chairman of Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC) and former President and CEO of Dubai Chamber of Commerce. He graduated with a DBA from Warwick Business School in 2024.

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