Have you logged into Facebook recently? Searched for something on Google? Chosen a movie on Netflix? If so, you've probably been an unwitting participant in a variety of experiments--also known as randomized controlled trials--designed to test the impact of different online experiences. Once an esoteric tool for academic research, the randomized controlled trial has gone mainstream. No tech company worth its salt (or its share price) would dare make major changes to its platform without first running experiments to understand how they would influence user behavior. In this book, Michael Luca and Max Bazerman explain the importance of experiments for decision making in a data-driven world.

Michael Luca is the Lee J. Styslinger III Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Professor Luca's research, teaching, and advisory work focuses on the design of online platforms, and on the ways in which data can inform managerial and policy decisions. His research has been published in academic journals including the Journal of Economic Perspectives, Management Science, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, American Economic Review: Papers and Proceeding, the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, and the American Economic Journal: Microeconomics. He has also written about behavioral economics and online platforms for media outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Wired, and Slate. His research has been written about in a variety of media outlets including The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, New Yorker, Atlantic, Economist, Washington Post, Financial Times, Guardian, Huffington Post, Harvard Business Review, Time, USA Today, Boston Globe, LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Fortune, Mashable, GQ, Wired, and Vox.

Professor Luca is a coauthor of The Power of Experiments: Decision-Making in a Data Driven World, which received favorable reviews by publications including the New Yorker and the Wall Street Journal, and has been used in the MBA classroom for courses on business analytics and on behavioral economics.  

At Harvard, Professor Luca developed and teaches an MBA course on using experiments to guide managerial decisions, called From Data to Decisions: Leveraging Experiments for Effective Strategy, Marketing, and Entrepreneurship. He has also taught and developed materials for executive education and MBA courses on platform design, behavioral economics, and business analytics.  

Professor Luca also serves on the board of directors at the National Association of Business Economics, the academic advisory board of the Behavioural Insights Team, and the advisory board of the CNBC Technology Executive Council, and is a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Source: Harvard Business School