Consistent Revision Doesn’t Make The Thing Necessarily Better

Do managers understand this?

Last night I’m laying on my couch listening to a podcast — how I do, baby! — and I start thumbing through the latest print issue of Harvard Business Review, which is sitting a few feet from me and my trusty pup. My first thought was, “Man, I don’t know why I subscribe to this. Most of the articles are generic.” (True.) And then, just as I was about to pull a plug, I find a tiny gem in the front of the book.

It’s about this thing called revision bias.

I can’t link the actual article — questionable print to digital strategy, baby! — but here’s a summary, including the basic idea:

Three experiments demonstrate a “revision bias” — people prefer experiences and products that have been revised over time, independent of objective improvements over predecessors. This effect holds even when less total effort was devoted to revised versions relative to beta versions.

Oh Gawd. This is such a big deal in the modern white-collar workplace.

My Sharona