The problem, of course, is that you can only afford a certain number of big experiments. Life is finite. And big experiments can be hard to A/B test against yo

The problem, of course, is that you can only afford a certain number of big experiments. Life is finite. And big experiments can be hard to A/B test against your mature product. This is what that whole "chasm" thing is about: the audience for new things is different from the audience for old things; present a radical new thing to someone who isn't an early adopter and it will get low marks. The automobile had really bad A/B results against the horse, for most audiences in the late 1800s. It is hard work to attract a new audience, when you have the alternative of incrementally improving the experience of the old audience. And, of course, the more time you've invested in building your radically different idea, the more crushed you will be by bad A/B data. A/B testing of tiny differences that can be toggled in five minutes is the least emotionally painful form of A/B, so no wonder it is so much more popular, to the extent that Atwood thinks it represents the entire field. Atwood's metaphor is still perfect, however. The movie Groundhog Day covers all of this. It's an astonishing work of art.