The Experimentation Field Book: A

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The Experimentation Field Book
The
Experimentation
Field Book
A Step-by-Step Project Guide

BY
Jeanne Liedtka
Elizabeth Chen
Natalie Foley
David Kester
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup.columbia.edu
Copyright © 2024 Jeanne Liedtka, Elizabeth Chen,
Natalie Foley, and David Kester
All rights reserved

Cataloging-in-Publication Data
available from the Library of Congress
LCCN 2023030499
ISBN 978-0-231-21417-9 (paper)
ISBN 978-0-231-56022-1 (electronic)

A Columbia University Press E-book.

CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at
cup-ebook@columbia.edu.

Book design by Leigh Ayers, 10/HALF Studios

Contents

Introduction to the Experimentation Process

The Five Steps

Step 1: Framing Testable Ideas

Step 2: Defining Evidence

Step 3: Selecting Your Test

Step 4: Building the Prototype

Step 5: Executing. Analyzing. Iterating.

Postscript

Acknowledgments

Templates
TEMPLATE 1 Progress Tracker

TEMPLATE 2 Value/Effort Matrix

TEMPLATE 3 Concept Snapshot

TEMPLATE 4 Storyboard

TEMPLATE 5 Surfacing Assumptions

TEMPLATE 6 Prioritizing Assumptions

TEMPLATE 7 Assumptions to Evidence

TEMPLATE 8 Data Sort

TEMPLATE 9 Say/Do Continuum

TEMPLATE 10 Test Design Decision Flow

TEMPLATE 11 Test Digest

TEMPLATE 12 Prototype Format Selection

TEMPLATE 13 Test Audit Checklist

TEMPLATE 14 Concept Test History

Introduction to the
Experimentation Process

DOES THE WORD experimentation conjure images of test tubes, safety

goggles, and possibly a dash of fire or smoke? Our early exposure to
experimentation is often in science class as part of the scientific
discovery process. Accompanying those beakers and lab coats is the
scientific method, a guide to running experiments.

But many people run experiments every day outside of science labs.
Long before you were learning about experiments in school, your
toddler brain was experimenting as a primary method of learning: If I
stack blocks like this, they don’t fall over. If I put my fingers near the
door, I can get hurt when it shuts.

Many organizations use experimentation to explore ideas for new

products, services, programs, and strategies. In this field book, we’ll
share stories from different organizations. Nike wanted to
experiment with a shoe subscription service for kids. Whiteriver
Hospital wanted to reduce patient wait time in their emergency room.
The Project Management Institute (PMI), a professional learning
organization, was interested in testing different ways to serve its
members. South Western Railway (SWR), one of the UK’s biggest
commuter railways, hoped to improve passenger experiences.
People at each of these organizations had good ideas on paper but
wondered if they would succeed in reality. They worried about being
wrong in their hunches. So, they used experimentation to test their
hunches before they built and launched their new ideas and before
spending a lot of time and money on them. Throughout this field
book, we will return to these four stories for inspiration and lessons
learned as we build your experimentation skills.

Organizations in Brief

Nike is one of the largest and most successful athletic apparel

companies in the world.

Whiteriver Hospital, located on the Fort Apache Indian

Reservation, has both inpatient beds and an emergency room
where most of the population’s medical needs have to be met.

South Western Railway (SWR), a joint venture between two of

the world’s leading rail companies, operates some of the
busiest train routes in the United Kingdom, with 235 million
passenger journeys a year.

The Project Management Institute (PMI) is the premier global

project management association, with nearly 500,000
members.

Entrepreneurs, teachers, caregivers, marketers, graphic designers,

social workers, even people doing their everyday routines all
experiment. Have you ever caught yourself saying, “I wonder if
taking this route home is faster? Let me try it and time it.” You’re
experimenting! Or think of a team leader considering, “If we send the
agenda in advance, it might make our meetings more effective. Let’s
try it for a few weeks and see if that’s true.” Experimenting! This field
book focuses on helping you to systematically design and execute
your own high-quality experiments on any idea you have.

Experimentation is much talked about in the abstract, but poorly

understood in practice. Yet it is the crucial connector between
imagining an idea and making it happen in reality.
 Why Experiment?

Here are a few reasons putting in the time to experiment is better than
just building a new idea:

• Experimentation protects you from overspending on a solution that won’t work for
the people you designed it for. By placing small bets and learning at a fast pace, you
can learn whether your concept really fulfills the unmet needs of your users—
whether patients, passengers, customers, or members—and if the idea is really
desirable to them.
• It encourages you to test a portfolio containing multiple ideas rather than converging
prematurely on a single idea. Then it lets your users highlight the one that works
best for them.
• Through experiments, you learn how to scale your idea effectively and successfully.
Testing aspects of the idea at smaller scales reduces the risk of early service
delivery friction and is less expensive.
• You’ll get to know your early adopters, and their feedback will inform future features
and help accelerate the development of your new product or service.
• Experimentation is fun and engaging! It gets you out of the conference room and
into the real world and allows you to invite those who will be part of the
implementation of a solution into the testing process, building buy-in and adding
energy and momentum to a project.

Experiments exist to collect the data to build an evidence base, to

support whether and how to launch new solutions, but they are often
underutilized or badly designed. At one extreme, they end up looking
like “soft launches” with little appetite for pivoting. In other fields, only
elaborate, formal experiments like randomized controlled trials,
which often last years rather than days or weeks, count. In this book,
we will show you how to take advantage of the often-unexplored
territory in between, where well-designed, learning-oriented field
experiments can add tremendous learning and risk reduction but
take only hours instead of weeks and cost next to nothing.

For most of us, building an evidence base is the best way to manage
the inevitable risk of trying new things in today’s dynamic
environments. In fact, skills in the design and execution of
experiments are fundamental and critical competencies for success
in an increasingly uncertain world where there are known unknowns
(things we know we don’t know) and unknown unknowns (things we
don’t know we don’t know). Experimentation helps us to better
address the first category and discover the second one. This
valuable tool is embedded into many problem-solving approaches
(like Lean Startup, Agile Software Development, Design Thinking,
Kaizen, and Process Improvement). Experiments also go by many
names; you might have heard about a new Google feature that is “in
beta” or about organizations running pilots or testing a minimum
viable product (MVP). Yes, the terms used for experimentation can
be confusing and full of jargon—but the terms we use are less
important than being precise about what the experiment seeks to
test and how it will accomplish that. Experimentation is a powerful
and effective learning tool for individuals or teams who are improving
a product or service that exists or creating something new to them,
their organization, or the world—all require deliberate learning
through action. Though the need for experimentation may seem
obvious, many organizations skip it. Why? Because the urge to “just
build it” (and hope they will come) is strong.

A hypothesis is the essential starting point for experimentation. Yes,

back to science class! A hypothesis is a best guess about what you
expect to be true or assume is true. Nike employees could have just
assumed parents would want a shoe subscription service and built it,
but instead they experimented to test the assumption that it met a
real customer need.

Hypotheses are conjectures that can be true or false. We find out if

they’re true by collecting data to confirm or disconfirm them. For
example, you can test if that new route you suspect to be faster truly
is by timing it and then comparing that to your old route time.
Hypothesis-driven thinking is the anchor of experimentation—and it
is fundamentally different from just using existing data to make your
decision. Hypothesis-driven thinking flips the usual process that
starts with the data you’ve already got. Instead, you start with the
hypothesis and then identify the data you need to test it rigorously
(which is often not the data you’ve already got). For your data to be
most useful, your data collection must be done with intention. To do
that, you need to be hypothesis driven.

Experimentation is not a “one and done” activity. It is a process that

evolves over time. You will run multiple tests, which will increase in
complexity as your hypothesis is further developed and refined. This
de-risks your solution development. Rather than just building the real
thing right away, experimenting helps you manage risk (you spend
time and money incrementally as risk moves from higher to lower),
gather evidence to test your assumptions from a range of actual
users (not only from conversations among colleagues or early
adopters), and improve your odds of success. The iteration that
occurs with experimentation creates a stronger solution by making
sure that people really want what you’ve designed and
demonstrating that you can deliver it in a viable way.
Experimentation can also be used to understand whether any given
problem is even worth solving.

We hope that we’ve convinced you of the why of experimentation

and the need to be hypothesis driven. In the rest of this field book,
we will focus on the how by providing a hands-on, structured process
to guide you through the design and execution of your very own
experiments. We will outline how to design and run tests to address
a variety of challenges—improving an existing solution, fixing
something that’s broken, making a new product, or launching a new
service for your existing customers. To do this, we provide a step-by-
step process, using the templates we have created. Together we will
explore five steps.

The Five Steps

Let’s look briefly at each step. Steps 1 and 2 focus on the what of
experimenting. Step 1, framing a testable idea, begins the process.
Because we will treat our ideas as hypotheses, we need to consider
what makes any given idea truly testable. We will explore this as we
look at the specifics of your idea and who it serves—information that
is needed to design a rigorous test. Next, in Step 2, we define what
constitutes evidence—what kind of data will tell us whether our
hypothesis (and the assumptions behind it) is true or false? Where
will we locate such data? Having specified what we are looking for,
we then move on to the question of how to conduct our experiment.
In Step 3 we sort through a variety of options to zero in on the best
type of test to collect the desired data. What type of test best suits
the particulars of our idea and the evidence we need to gather?
Once we have selected the test type, in Step 4 we develop the
stimulus we will use to provoke feedback by building the prototype,
the simplest one that will do the job. Finally, with the key ingredients
in hand—our testable idea (our hypothesis), our test type (our
intervention), and our prototype (our stimulus)—we move on to the
question of what we have learned in Step 5, as we execute our test
plan, analyze the results it produces, and iterate our way to an
improved solution.

Prototypes and Pyramids

Prototyping has been around a long time! The Great Pyramid at Giza,
constructed in 2528 BC, is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the World and
the only one that remains largely intact. Scholars believe that its construction,
estimated to take decades—or even centuries—almost certainly relied on an
iterative process using low-fidelity prototypes, including drawings and
 schematics. “The wonders of ancient Greece and Egypt required engineering
far in advance of their time, and marvels of engineering such as the Pyramids
and the Parthenon didn’t sprout up out of the ground whole,” explains
engineering expert David Walsh.*

* “The Top Four Ancient Design Prototypes” by David Walsh, 8/19/15, https://www.asme.org/topics-
resources/content/top-4-ancient-design-prototypes

But these steps are rarely as linear as our model suggests.

Frequently we loop back to earlier steps. The selection of a test type,
Step 3, and prototype format, Step 4, are usually highly interactive,
and it is not uncommon to move back and forth in an iterative way to
complete them. Sometimes our ideas fail in Step 5 and we loop back
to Step 1 to start all over again with a new idea. Or maybe they
succeed, so we loop back to Step 2 to design a more sophisticated
test with a higher-fidelity prototype and different evidence—or to test
a different set of assumptions. And, of course, things happen before
our Step 1—the process of generating the idea, for instance—while
the essential activities around scaling an idea in the real world occur
after our Step 5, when the period of experimentation ends and
implementation begins.

As we move through these five steps and apply them to your idea,
we will illustrate them in action with examples from our own
experiences and research working with innovators at Nike,
Whiteriver Hospital, the Project Management Institute, and South
Western Railway. Because the ideas you will want to test come in
different forms—products, services, processes, software, or a
combination of these—our stories encompass this variety. Let’s
preview these four stories, which we will return to time and time
again.

Our Four Stories in Detail

Nike Easykicks

Context Challenge Process

Nike is one of Nike had identified Nike knew they

the largest and some problems needed help in
most worth addressing: testing the business
successful kids grew fast and model of services,
athletic apparel wrecked shoes, so like Easykicks, that
companies in parents constantly had caused
the world. Like needed to buy new challenges for them
many ones to in the past, so they
consumer accommodate their partnered with Peer
packaged- kids’ growing feet. Insight, a firm
goods firms, Shopping at a store known for acumen
they wanted to with kids wasn’t in market
explore typically enjoyable. In experimentation.
expanding into addition, though Peer Insight led a
services that some old shoes were process using the
would allow donated, many old steps outlined in
them to pairs lay abandoned this field book to
diversify in in musty closets, and design and run tests
ways that Nike, with a on the new
would develop commitment to subscription service
deeper sustainability, had over an 18-month
customer invested in period.
relationships. technology to recycle
old shoe materials.
So, they wanted to
explore the idea of a
shoe subscription
service, Easykicks,
for young athletes, a
population they
wanted to get to
know and serve
better. The new
subscription service
offered an
opportunity to
 address both the
hassle of shoe
shopping and the
need for recycling.

Whiteriver Hospital

Context Challenge Process

Whiteriver The hospital faced a HHS operated

Hospital is serious situation: close the Ignite
located on the to 25 percent of Accelerator, a
Fort Apache emergency department program of their
Indian (ED) visitors were IDEA Lab aimed
Reservation, leaving without being at bringing new
which covers seen, a problem innovation
more than a attributed to long wait approaches to
million acres times. Nonemergency employees
and serves a patients consistently got across the
population delayed as staff United States.
upward of addressed true Ignite offered
15,000, mostly emergencies, with education,
Apache. It falls arrivals sometimes coaching, and a
under the waiting as long as six small funding
jurisdiction of hours before being stipend, to boost
the U.S. seen. When potential projects that
Department of patients left the offered the hope
Health and emergency room (which of addressing
Human they did at a rate twenty agency
Services (HHS) times the U.S. national problems.
and has both average), their medical Whiteriver’s
inpatient beds problems worsened. Performance
and an Often these eventually Improvement
emergency became true Team was
room where emergencies, and invited to test the
most of the patients needed to be electronic kiosk
population’s helicoptered off the idea as part of
medical needs reservation for more the Ignite
have to be met, extensive and expensive program, using a
including care. The Whiteriver process similar
prescription Performance to that outlined
refills. Improvement Team here.
wanted to explore the
idea of adding an
Electronic Kiosk, similar
to one at Johns Hopkins
Hospital in Baltimore,
where a patient
electronically signed in
upon arrival, and the
electronic system
informed other parts of
the hospital of that
patient’s potential
needs, saving
administrative time and
speeding up the intake
process for patients so
that more patients could
be seen more quickly in
the ED.

South Western Railway

Context Challenge Process

SWR, a joint SWR leadership Using ethnographic

venture saw an opportunity research tools, DK&A
between two to improve the partnered with SWR
of the world’s passenger staff at three central rail
leading rail experience. Unlike stations to better
companies, Nike and understand the
operates Whiteriver, SWR problems and needs of
some of the did not start with a their passengers. They
busiest train solution in mind; synthesized this
routes in the they wanted to first research, identifying
United explore the insights and creating
Kingdom, with problems journey maps and
235 million passengers faced personas. Based on
passenger in more detail. these, they facilitated a
journeys a They collective brainstorming
year. SWR commissioned the process that identified
faced consultancy David multiple ideas. Three
challenges Kester and concepts emerged as
with industrial Associates particularly attractive:
relations, (DK&A), a leading the Concierge (aimed
major network design firm, to help at offering a warm
repairs, staff them find both welcome and providing
morale, and quick wins and a the right infrastructure
the passenger long-term strategy to better support
experience. to improve the customers in the
SWR customer ticketing process),
experience. They Cleaner and Cleaner (a
captured the hygiene awareness and
challenge: to learn nudge campaign to
fast from provide reassurance to
customers, rapidly the public), and the
deliver confidence- Wayfinding Audit
building basics at (addressing poor
SWR stations, and signage and visual
together shape the clutter with smart
future SWR customer-led tools).
experience. DK&A then embarked
on an experimentation
phase, using a process
similar to the steps
outlined here.

Project Management Institute

Context Challenge Process

PMI is the PMI had already Each idea was

premier global done extensive intriguing but
project research to better untested, and with
management understand the an important board
association, with problems and meeting
nearly 500,000 needs of their approaching, PMI
members. Like members, and had leadership needed
many identified four high- to make choices
membership level ideas they about which ideas to
associations, thought had invest in. They
they struggle with significant potential partnered with Peer
how to evolve to create value for Insight to run a
and continue to them: series of
add value for 1. Snippets: A experiments over
their members microlearning three months on the
beyond their core platform that four offerings to
product, the curated quick, narrow down which
Project bite-sized they should move
trainings and
Management resources to fit
forward. From there,
Professional members’ day- Peer Insight ran a
(PMP) to-day learning series of deeper
certification. needs. market experiments
2. Career over six months on
Navigator: A self- the best performing
assessment tool concepts, again
that showed using our five-step
potential career
process.
paths based on
a member’s
experience,
skills, and
interests.
3. Hive: A peer-to-
peer connection
platform that
allowed
members to get
answers to their
toughest project
management
questions by
connecting
directly to
experienced
peers.
4. Spot: An
experiential
learning
 opportunity that
matched
members with
real-world, low-
risk opportunities
to help them
hone needed
skills.

Each of these organizations spent time to first understand the

problems their customers faced, to ensure that they invested in
solutions that solved problems that mattered. We will pick up their
stories as each enters the experimentation process with particular
ideas that they want to test. Though experimentation can be used to
identify problems as well as to test solutions, in this field book we will
focus on how to test a given solution—like Easykicks, the Electronic
Kiosk, the Concierge, or Career Navigator—to see whether it does,
in fact, meet an identified need.

As we get started, a note to you, our reader: we wrote this book

under the assumption that you have an idea of your own that you
want to test. Great! This is the most effective way to work with this
book—to learn while doing—whether it's with an actual idea or one
you want to use just to learn with. We will use your ideas to practice
the learning-by-doing process in Steps 1 through 5. In each step, we
will give you an assignment to apply what we’ve talked about to your
own idea—so you’ll be both learning and doing as we go. We will
ask you to note the milestones in your journey through the five steps
using our Progress Tracker [TEMPLATE 1, PAGE 82 ].

By the time we conclude, you will have followed your idea through
one full cycle of testing.

Let’s get started exploring the world of experi-mentation!

On to Step 1!
STEP 1
Framing
Testable
Ideas

IN STEP 1 YOU WILL LEARN TO:

Frame a testable idea

Prioritize concepts for testing

Complete a Concept Snapshot

Framing a Testable Idea

An idea that cannot be tested is useless; if you can’t bring data to

bear on it, it needs more development. Of the many supposed
“hypotheses” generated by the learners we work with, 90 percent are
not testable: they are vague and abstract. An idea for a new product,
for instance, is by itself not testable. Testability requires identifying a
target user, their needs, and specifics about how the solution will be
executed. To be testable, your idea must also contain enough detail
to make it clear to others.

Let’s say that your friend has an idea for a tiny drone that hovers
above a reader’s head and shines a light on their book while they
are reading at night in bed. That’s not a testable idea . . . yet. It
needs more definition: What kind of reader is the drone designed
for? What problem is it trying to solve? How will it work? What makes
it better than their current night light, lamp, or book light?

Let’s look closer at these qualities that characterize a testable idea:

A testable idea is as specific as possible. Without sufficient detail,

test results will be as vague as the idea you started with. You may be
tempted to identify as broad a target market as possible for your new
idea. Resist that impulse and focus instead on designing as simple
and specific a test as possible for a clearly identified group of
customers or users—in your friend’s case, people who enjoy reading
in bed at night. At Whiteriver Hospital, for instance, the team dug
deeper beyond the broad category of “patients visiting the ER” to
identify who the most frequent users were. They were tribal elders,
many of whom did not read or speak English.

An idea worth testing also brings something new to the table.

Technically, you could create and test an idea that looks just like
existing offerings in the market. But why would you want to? Think
about it: What kind of hypotheses did Sherlock Holmes like best?
Never the obvious ones; you don’t build your career as a famous
detective—or an innovation leader—by proposing the obvious. It is
fine for the idea to look obvious in retrospect (the best ones often
do), but at the outset, it should feel fresh. In business parlance, we
call these fresh ideas differentiated—distinct from what is already
available to customers. Though the electronic kiosk that Whiteriver
wanted to try wasn’t new to the world, it would be new to their
patients.

Finally, a good idea is worth the trouble to test. That is, the payoff
should at least potentially be worth the effort in terms of producing a
return for the organization as well as the user. Running experiments
costs time and money. You want to invest your testing energy in
places with a likelihood of a good payoff. Are you meeting the needs
of a sufficiently large group of users? Is your idea deliverable at a
reasonable cost? Will users be able to access and pay for the
service as needed? Thinking about these longer-term issues doesn’t
mean that you expect all your ideas to succeed, but it does mean
that those that do will be worth something. The Performance
Improvement Team at Whiteriver believed that visitors departing
without being seen were not only seriously risking their own health
but also significantly impacting the hospital’s financial health.

Often, the offerings you want to test are composed of several ideas.
In our terminology, a concept refers to a combination of ideas. For
example, Easykicks, Nike’s subscription shoe service, is a concept
that combines a few distinct ideas or components, such as creating a
subscription service and recycling old shoes. To keep it simple, for
the remainder of this book, we will refer to the hypothetical offerings
we want to test, whether they are individual ideas or combinations of
ideas, as concepts. We will capture their key elements in a Concept
Snapshot (more on this coming up).

Prioritizing Concepts for Testing

In our introduction, we alluded to the power of moving multiple ideas

into experimentation. By not “putting all of our eggs in one basket”
and instead offering options to our customers (and then letting them
choose), we create the most value for them at the least risk to
ourselves. Accordingly, it’s best to move a portfolio of concepts into
testing. It is unlikely that you have the time and resources to test all
of your concepts, so you need to have clear priorities about which to
start with, to use your experimental energy well. Not all concepts are
of equal value. In most cases, two dimensions are especially useful
to think about in the prioritization process: (1) how much value or
impact you believe the concept will create for the intended customer
and (2) how much effort it is likely to take to execute. The
Value/Effort Matrix [TEMPLATE 2] uses these dimensions as axes to
help you lay out and choose the particular ideas to include in your
testing portfolio.

TEMPLATE 2

Value/Effort Matrix

When using the matrix, you can also look for synergies among the
different ideas, as quick wins can often be developed or combined to
form more strategic concepts. The Concierge concept, for instance,
was created by connecting three discrete ideas.
In selecting which concepts to prioritize for testing, the upper left
quadrant (high value/easy to execute) is a great place to look for
early wins. High-value, easy-to-execute concepts tend to be few but
are logically a high priority for immediate attention. Conversely, low-
value, hard-to-execute concepts (bottom right quadrant) are rarely of
interest. However, most concepts will fall along a diagonal line with
similar value-to-effort profiles. Think about your strategic goals as
you select concepts to move into testing. Your prioritization process
and criteria will differ depending on your projects’ constraints,
including time, resources, and risk tolerance.

This process, in theory, is similar to how you might choose stocks for
an investment portfolio aimed at your retirement. If you’re twenty-five
years old, for example, you might orient your portfolio toward growth
stocks with a high potential for capital appreciation. Conversely, at
sixty-five, you would more likely play it safe, preferring less volatile
ones with more stable returns. At forty-five, you might want a
balance between those two extremes. In the same way an investor
assembles a stock portfolio with specific objectives in mind, you will
assemble your portfolio of concepts for testing. Think about your
larger strategic goals and priorities. Are you pressed for time with
limited resources and looking for quick wins? Or, conversely, do you
have an appetite for taking a higher risk profile to go for maximum
visibility and impact? Or does a combination of payoffs to yield both
short-term and longer-term results make the most sense? The
answers to these questions depend on your individual strategy and
circumstances.

Completing a Concept Snapshot

Once you have prioritized and selected your portfolio of concepts for
testing, you want to ensure that your concept has the important
characteristics— is specific, fresh, and worth testing—that we talked
about earlier. The Concept Snapshot [TEMPLATE 3 ] helps you lay out
a concise statement of your idea, specifying its key elements: the
intended users, why it meets their needs, and why it is differentiated.

TEMPLATE 3

Easykicks Concept Snapshot

The Peer Insight team created a Concept Snapshot for Easykicks

that highlighted two different users of the design (kids aged 8 to 12
and their parents), how it served their needs, what they would offer
to accomplish this, and why the concept was differentiated.

To push concept development even deeper, you can create a simple

storyboard. A storyboard is a visual tool used to show an experience
through a series of pictures. Like a comic strip, it tells the story of
your concept so that others can understand what you’re imagining. It
is one of the most basic forms of prototyping (we will talk more about
this in Step 4). Despite its simplicity, the act of storyboarding is
powerful for many reasons: It helps to flesh out a high-level idea. It
also translates a concept from a static offering into a user
experience. Creating this kind of “pre-experience” of a new idea is
essential to getting accurate feedback from the people you are
designing with and for. Finally, storyboarding helps a team align
around a shared view of what they are creating together—you know
that you are all talking about the same thing as you move into the
testing process.

The Peer Insight team elaborated on their Concept Snapshot by

storyboarding what the customer’s experience using Easykicks
would look like.

Easykicks Storyboard

Here’s one of the simple storyboards that the Peer Insight team started
with for Easykicks. You’ll notice some blank panels; that’s intentional as they
wanted research participants to co-create this with them. TEMPLATE 4, page 86, is a
storyboard template you can use in your work.

Assignment

So that’s Step 1. Are you ready for your first assignment? Full-scale
templates begin on page 81.
1

Take the list of ideas or concepts that you have developed and map
them onto the Value/Effort Matrix [TEMPLATE 2, page 84 ], according
to your assessment of the relative value and effort they involve.

Next, consider which concept you want to use to practice the

remaining steps in this book and prepare a Concept Snapshot
[TEMPLATE 3, page 85] for it.

In selecting which concept to use, consider the following questions:

• Can you readily access people in the target market you will need
to test with?
• Do you have the ability and permission to intervene in their
experience?
• Do you have the resources necessary to build a rough prototype,
gather data, and run tests?
• Can you engage the support of those needed to help you
implement your ultimate solution?

Finally, flesh out your concept with a simple Storyboard [TEMPLATE 4,

page 86 ].
Great! You’ve completed Step 1—you’ve made some choices and
now have a concept ready for testing. Log your progress in your
Progress Tracker [TEMPLATE 1, page 82 ]:

Frame a testable idea

Prioritize concepts for testing

Complete a Concept Snapshot

Now let’s move on to the next step in the process—identifying the

data you will need to collect to test it.

On to Step 2!
STEP 2
Defining
Evidence

IN STEP 2 YOU WILL LEARN TO:

Surface critical assumptions

Prioritize assumptions for testing

Establish what constitutes evidence and identify targets

WITH YOUR PRIORITIZED concept in hand, you are ready to define the kind of evidence you will look
for to assess whether your idea is worth further investment. While “fail fast” has become a mantra
for innovation efforts, this doesn’t mean just tossing ideas into the market to see what happens.
Doing quality experimentation requires careful design: If learning is your goal, you want to be sure
that your failures are intelligent ones that teach you something new and help you make tough
choices among competing ideas. That means putting careful forethought into what you are testing
for, what success looks like, and what data you need. Here’s where we start thinking about what
specific data to collect and how to assess whether it supports or rejects our hypothesis. For
example, Nike thought that people would return their shoes if it were easy for them to do so but
wanted to gather evidence to support that assumption.

DEFINITIONS

Assumptions Underlying beliefs about why you think your idea is a good one

Countable phenomena or data points that validate or refute a stated

Evidence
assumption­—quantitative or qualitative

Hypothesis The concept you want to test

Threshold The minimum value a metric needs to achieve to support moving the
target concept forward to the next stage of testing

Future-focused target that describes the value you would like to see
Aspirational
the metric achieve when your concept is successfully implemented in
target
the real world

Where you will find your evidence—may be archival (already existing)

Source
or new data gathered from the field

To define evidence, we:

1. Surface the assumptions behind any given concept;
2. Prioritize these assumptions to identify the most critical ones for testing; and
3. Define the evidence associated with them and its sources, and assign target metrics, both
threshold and aspirational. Sources may include both existing archival data and field data (to be
gathered in the real world) and can be either qualitative or quantitative.

Sound complicated? It needn’t be. We have found that a simple fill-in-the-blank exercise can help
to identify the different elements in this step.

Let’s look at the sequence of activities in more detail. We begin by getting clear about what we are
testing for. As we talked about earlier, we are looking for fresh ideas. They need not be new to the
world—they just need to add value in three ways: desirability (value to our target audience),
feasibility (ability to be executed), and viability (commercial sustainablity over time). We call the
intersection of these three conditions the Wow Zone:
Surfacing Critical Assumptions Underlying Your Concept

To assess whether any given concept wows, we start by surfacing the assumptions we are making
about why it meets each of the three conditions of desirability, feasibility, and viability. In other words,
we articulate clearly why we believe that a concept belongs in the Wow Zone. These assumptions
form the foundation of our testing strategy—they will point us toward the right metrics to gather that
will signal whether or not these assumptions are valid.

You might be thinking, wait, I’m supposed to test my assumptions? I thought I was trying to test the
concept itself. But in a hypothesis-driven problem-solving approach, you test the assumptions
behind a concept rather than the concept itself. Because our new concepts do not yet exist in the
real world (only in our imagination), we don’t want to commit the time and resources to build them
until we learn more about their desirability, feasibility, and viability. So instead, we test the
assumptions underlying their attractiveness. At Whiteriver, they couldn’t test the Electronic Kiosk
without the time and expense of building it—but they could much more easily test the assumption
that ER patients were comfortable using computers. This testing of assumptions rather than ideas is
how we manage our risk. To test assumptions, we don’t need to build a fully functional prototype—
we just need a version functional enough to test the most critical assumptions underlying it. Without
attention to assumptions, we risk investing in flawed ideas, jumping to conclusions, and falling victim
to classic cognitive biases like the confirmation bias. Early on, testing the key assumptions
underlying a concept, rather than the concept itself, is the fastest, cheapest way to learn.

Assumptions Behind PMI’s Spot Concept

Remember Spot, one of the four concepts that PMI wanted to test? Spot aimed to provide PMI members with real-
world experiential learning by matching them with actual, low-risk opportunities to hone their skills. To test Spot,
the Peer Insight team identified key assumptions under each of the three conditions:

For desirability, they wondered whether members would want to be involved in such projects. Would they see this
as a good way to hone their skills?

For feasibility, they wondered if it would be possible to find the right kinds of projects and manage such a complex
system of worldwide projects well.

And for viability, they worried that, even if it were feasible to find and run good projects, the cost to do this might be
too high to make it viable long-term.

Surfacing assumptions can turn out to be surprisingly difficult. Counterintuitively, it can be especially
difficult for experts in different fields. In health care, for example, where the beliefs of highly trained
clinical professionals have long driven decision making, assumptions are often made about the
needs and desires of patients that turn out not to be true.

False Assumptions in Health Care

IN DALLAS, Children’s Health IN MELBOURNE, innovators at

Systems of Texas (CHST),
one of the largest pediatric
medical centers in the United
States, faced clear challenges:
the children they served had
some of the most troubling
health indicators in the United
States, with nearly 30 percent
living in poverty. CHST
leadership realized that their
assumptions did not reflect the
reality of their patients’ lives.
They initially assumed that
patients and their families
focused on preventative care
with a proactive mindset, had
strong support networks, and
trusted caregivers’ advice. The
reality was that overwhelmed
families experiencing poverty
often struggled from crisis to
crisis with a more reactive
symptom-driven focus, lacked
traditional support networks,
and were sometimes
suspicious of caregivers’
information. They needed a
new approach based on
patients’ actual experiences,
Monash University Medical
Center wanted to train lay
telecare guides to act as
“professional neighbors” to keep
in frequent telephone contact
with elderly patients at high risk
of hospital admission. They
believed that carefully selected
laypeople, trained in health
literacy and empathy skills and
backed by decision support and
professional coaches, could
reduce hospitalization rates.
Many of their clinical colleagues
were skeptical, opposed to
anyone other than a health
professional performing such
services, concerned about
reducing the quality of care.
Rather than debating this point,
the innovators engaged their
colleagues in the design of an
experiment to test the value that
lay telecare guides could deliver.
Three hundred patients later, the
results were in: overwhelmingly
positive patient feedback and a
demonstrated reduction in
IN ARIZONA, at
Whiteriver Hospital, the
Performance Improvement
Team realized that their
assumption that ER patients
were comfortable using
computers was in error. Many
tribal elders, the largest group
of emergency room visitors,
were not comfortable using the
type of new technology that
their planned Electronic Kiosk
employed. Such a system, no
matter how efficient it had
proven to be in urban
Baltimore, would likely create
more, not fewer, delays at
Whiteriver. As a result, the
team pivoted to a paper form
aimed at identifying the
severity of patients’ medical
issues as soon as they entered
the emergency department.
The simple, one-page form
literally asked patients whether
they needed emergency or
nonemergency care, such as a
visit with a nurse or a
rather than their own beliefs as hospitalization rates and prescription refill, and anyone
medical professionals. emergency room visits. in the emergency room could
help them check the boxes to
respond.

As you surface the assumptions behind your concept, you may find yourself tempted to just turn one
of the conditions (like desirability) into a statement (Assumption: Users find our solution desirable).
But at this abstract level, such an assumption is not testable. We need to push deeper to get more
specific about why we believe that this particular condition is met (Assumption: Customers value the
time savings that our product provides).

Surfacing assumptions works best as a team sport. Plus, bringing key stakeholders into agreement
about what the important assumptions are and what it will take to confirm them is critical. Structured
conversations that put the right people in the room (real or virtual) to frame and plan the testing
journey and collaboratively identify what success looks like will accelerate your progress by
broadening your perspectives and building excitement, momentum, and alignment around what
makes a concept a wow. In all four examples we use in this field book, teams worked together to
surface assumptions and determine what data they would need to test them.

In the earliest stages of experimentation, assumptions about desirability will be more important than
assumptions about feasibility or viability. After all, what good is a feasible or viable solution that isn’t
desirable to the people it was designed for?

We use the Surfacing Assumptions tool (template 5), organized by the three conditions we want to
test for, to capture the assumptions related to each of our prioritized concepts.

The team at SouthWestern Railway (SWR) working to test the Concierge concept, aimed at building
high-quality personal relationships with customers, identified a set of assumptions related to
desirability (creating a warm welcome that customers valued), feasibility (the service can run with
existing staff levels), and viability (potential to self-fund).

TEMPLATE 5
SWR’s Concierge Concept Assumptions

Desirability
• Creates a warm welcome that customers value
• Provides more efficient service for customers
• Increases SWR staff enjoyment of job

Feasibility
• Can flex to the needs of different stations
• Allows skills to be developed without costly training
• Can be run with existing staff
• Employs existing assets
 Viability
• Allows technology to be integrated to achieve self-service
• Frees up potential increased retail space
• Makes self-funding possible

When you lay out the assumptions underlying your concepts, you will likely find that you have more
than you can—or want to—test. Beware of letting the scope and cost of experiments balloon by
trying to test too many assumptions. In Step 1, we prioritized our concepts to determine which ones
to move into testing. Now, in Step 2, we will dig deeper and prioritize the critical assumptions
underlying each concept. That will tell us where to start the testing process. Fortunately, not all
assumptions are equally important—you start with the most critical ones, the ones that make or
break your concept.

Prioritizing Assumptions for Testing

Almost all new concepts rest on a limited number of particularly significant assumptions. If these are
true, they make the concept worth moving forward. If they are false, the rest of the assumptions
don’t matter enough to bother testing. To prioritize, focus your attention on two aspects of each of
your assumptions:

1) How critical is that assumption to the success of the concept?

2) How much do you already know (from existing sources) about the likelihood that this
assumption is true or false?

You can use the Prioritizing Assumptions tool (TEMPLATE 6) to capture this.

After putting together their list of assumptions for the Concierge concept, the SWR team prioritized
their critical assumptions before proceeding.

Prioritizing Critical Assumptions Behind the Concierge Concept

The DK&A team sorted the assumptions behind SWR’s Concierge Concept, using the criteria of how important
each was to the concept’s success and what they already knew. Some, such as the possibility of self-funding and
the use of existing assets, were considered to be low priorities for testing: they were not seen as critical, and quite
a lot was known about them. Others, such as the training required to develop the new staff skills needed and the
ability to integrate new technology, were seen as more critical, but SWR had confidence in their existing
knowledge of them.

Three assumptions emerged as the most critical and unknown, all related to desirability.

The Concierge concept:

1. Creates a warm welcome that customers value
2. Provides more efficient service
3. Increases SWR staff enjoyment of their jobs.

These three assumptions formed the focus of their initial testing efforts.
Translating Assumptions Into Evidence

Once you have identified a small number of critical assumptions to prioritize for testing, we move
from talking about what we assume to be true to talking about collecting evidence that it is true. This
transition changes the conversation in two significant ways. First, it becomes personal. Assumptions
reflect properties of the new concept and should be visible to all—but whether something is “proven”
true lies in the eyes of the beholder. Pay attention to who needs to conclude that something is true
and how they see the world. We tailor the identification of metrics to the key stakeholders we must
convince. Invest some time in thinking about who those stakeholders are and what their relationship
is to the concept you want to test. Who needs convincing? How skeptical are they? What is at stake
for them? How fast do they expect you to generate evidence?

You can use these questions as an exercise in co-creation—invite a diverse set of your key
stakeholders into a conversation aimed at answering them. At SWR, for example, one of the key
stakeholder groups, senior SWR leadership, was anxious to see credible test results in actual
station environments as soon as possible.

Warning

You may be tempted to skip the surfacing of assumptions and go straight to identifying evidence, based on the data
you have available. This is a serious mistake, as it will encourage you to work backward from the data you’ve got.
That is not hypothesis driven! Instead, you want to start with the assumptions you need to test and only then specify
the right kind of evidence to assess them (which may or may not already exist).

The second change in the conversation, as we move toward collecting evidence is the level of
specificity. Though we have worked hard to make our assumptions less ambiguous, evidence must
be observable and countable, a more demanding standard. It must also fit the context of the test you
are about to do. Some issues to consider as you define your evidence:
• How much time do you have available for the testing process?
• What kinds of resources can you call on?
• How big is your budget? What can you afford?
• What is possible from a technical viewpoint?

The DK&A team asked themselves how they would know if the three critical assumptions behind the
Concierge concept were true. How would these show up in observable and countable ways? To test
the creates a warm welcome assumption, they considered evidence based on how many
customers sought out the Concierge services and whether they expressed appreciation for the
services. For the increased efficiency assumption, they looked for reduced wait times at windows
and increased use of self-service. For improved employee satisfaction, they solicited staff
members’ feelings about their new role.

The form that evidence takes often needs to be iterated as you push further into the experimentation
process and learn more. In general, as projects progress, the desired evidence increases in terms of
specificity, becomes more quantitative, and comes from multiple sources to manage the risk of the
increasing investment being made in the new concept. In the early stages of testing, it is not always
obvious what to measure. Data sources in the real world are messy, and more than one metric is
often needed to show whether assumptions are true or not. Sometimes the best we can do is to
verify whether we are directionally correct. For these reasons, triangulation from multiple data
sources is always valuable.
It makes sense to begin your search for the right evidence by reviewing those measures already in
use that may have value and asking yourself the following questions: What evidence has meaning in
this sector, with the audience you must convince, or for this type of activity? What is already being
measured? Can you adapt ongoing monitoring to support your experiment? Examining existing data
is an important step in preparing to go into the field—just make sure to remain hypothesis driven!

The relative value of qualitative versus quantitative data is also important to consider. Quantitative
data may be already available, but does it measure what you need? Qualitative data, the kind that is
good for sense-making and that assures directional correctness, may be essential, but needs to be
gathered from the field. In addition, some audiences may prefer quantitative over qualitative data,
while others love stories. As you specify the evidence for your concepts, you will likely want a
combination of qualitative and quantitative data, drawn from both archival and field sources, at each
stage. Once these are specified, you need to identify the source of the data. Ask yourself where you
will find the data you need.

TEMPLATE 7

Assumptions to Evidence for SWR’s Concierge Concept

Assumption Evidence Threshold Targets Source

Creates a Frequency of Number of customers Observation

warm customers seeking interacting with in ticket hall
welcome interactions with Concierge staff goes
that Concierge staff up 30 percent or more
customers
value Positive comments 60 percent of Customer
from customers interviews have intercept
expressing appreciation customers noting interviews
for the service appreciation for the
service when
unprompted

Provides Volume/speed/accuracy 90 percent of Observation

more of Concierge staff Concierge staff in ticket hall
efficient answers answers meet
service for customers needs in
customers terms of
and enables volume/speed/accuracy
improved
interaction Length of queues at 40 percent (or more) Observation
with SWR ticket windows decrease in length of in ticket hall
staff queues compared
with
historical
record

Increased volume of 40 percent (or more) Sales data

ticketspurchased at increase in volume of from self-
self-service window tickets purchased via service
self-service machines machines
compared
with
historical
record
Increases Staff appreciation for 60 percent of staff have Staff
SWR staff and interest in an appreciation for and interviews
enjoyment of remaining in new role express interest in
jobs versus returning to remaining in new role
ticket window

The DK&A team, for instance, identified evidence in support of the Concierge concept that was both
qualitative (e.g., customer and staff satisfaction) and quantitative (e.g., queues at ticket windows,
sales data from automated ticket machines).

As a final activity in Step 2, it is valuable to identify and differentiate between aspirational targets
(the ones that you hope your idea will eventually produce) and threshold targets (which tell you
whether to go to the next step) and offer both for each metric. It is unrealistic to believe that you will
reach aspirational targets over the course of hours, days, or weeks. Even so, setting a target up
front provides information to assess the magnitude of change and how long it might take to reach
the aspirational targets. You can then consider whether that aligns with your project timeline to reach
the desired impact or not. If yes, carry on. If not, you may need to go back to Step 1 and select a
different concept for testing.

Tips for Surfacing Assumptions

• What questions are still outstanding? Ask yourself, “What don’t I know for certain?”
• Put on an investor’s hat: What questions would need to be answered to receive another round of funding? What do you
need to prove?
• Convert your questions into affirmative statements (e.g., Customers want to recycle old shoes).
• Think about the categories: desirability, feasibility, viability.
• Be sure your assumption is specific enough.
• Revisit some of the design tools traditionally used to inspire idea generation, like journey maps, jobs-to-be-done,
personas, or value chain maps, to help you surface assumptions.

Tips for Identifying Targets

For each piece of quantitative evidence, ask yourself: What is the smallest amount of change you’d want to
see in order to feel solid about moving this concept forward for further testing? This will give you your threshold
target. Then ask: What is the desired/hoped for amount of change when the concept is successfully
implemented? This helps pinpoint your aspirational target.

For each piece of qualitative evidence, ask yourself: What are the near-term expected responses that would
signal that you are headed in the right direction? These will give you a threshold target. Then ask: What are the
desired/hoped for responses you would want to see in the future? This signifies your aspirational target.

Assignment

It’s assignment time again! (Remember that you can find the full-scale templates beginning on page
82.)
1

Use the Surfacing Assumptions tool [TEMPLATE 5, page 87] to lay out the key assumptions you
believe underlie the concept you have selected for testing, according to the conditions of desirability,
feasibility, and viability.

Next, identify which assumptions are most critical, and decide which ones it is most important to test
first using the Prioritizing Assumptions tool [TEMPLATE 6, page 88 ].

Finally, using the Assumptions to Evidence tool [TEMPLATE 7, page 89], capture the evidence,
sources, and targets associated with each assumption.
Log your progress in your Progress Tracker [TEMPLATE 1, page 82]:

Surface critical assumptions

Prioritize assumptions for testing

Establish what constitutes evidence and identify targets

Now that you have a clear set of assumptions, metrics, and targets for the concept you want to test,
you are ready to move from the what of testing to the how. Then move on to the next step in the
process—selecting a type of test.

On to Step 3!
STEP 3
Selecting
Your Test

IN STEP 3 YOU WILL LEARN TO:

Choose between Say and Do tests

Select a test type

Design your test

IN STEP 2, you identified the critical assumptions underlying the

concept you want to test, along with associated evidence and
targets. Now it’s time to select the type of test that will help you
gather the data you need to assess whether your critical
assumptions are valid.

Keep in mind that you will run multiple tests over the course of the
experimentation process, which will grow in complexity and rigor as
your concept evolves. Nike didn't run just one test on Easykicks,
their shoe subscription service. Instead, they started with one small
test, and when the data showed that they should keep going, they
ran further rounds—a second test, and a third, and so on. Here, in
Step 3, we will lay out a set of questions that will allow you to select
the best test at each particular point in your journey.

There are many different kinds of tests and selecting the best one at
any given point in your learning process can seem daunting. This
chapter will guide you through a series of questions to sort through
your options and help you determine the best one. We know that
there are a lot of concepts, assumptions, evidence, and questions
swirling around in your brain right now. That’s to be expected. We
will take all of these inputs and systematically lead you to the single
test type that will best help you learn based on where you are right
now. This chapter is a funnel of sorts, guiding you to take vast
amounts of information and determine a way forward.

To simplify this, we will focus on just five types of field tests—the

ones we observe to be used most often in the experimentation
process. (“Field test” means a test run in the real world, or in the
“field.”)

FIVE TYPES OF FIELD TESTS

Cognitive walkthroughs help you find partners and

customers by walking them through your concept in detail.
They invite the prospective user to help you shape a still
malleable concept, using tools like pitch decks, storyboards,
or paper prototypes.

Lemonade stands are short-term pop-ups, easy to create

and then easy to take down. Though they represent a more
significant investment than cognitive walkthroughs, they allow
the user to come to you, rather than you going to them.
Smoke tests run competing versions of ads with different
value propositions (how we propose to deliver value) linked to
landing pages aimed at “faking a new business fast.” They
ask prospective customers to act in some way—click a link,
send an email, or sign up to be part of a beta test.

Simulations can be either virtual experiences that

prospective users click through or physical experiences that
use a Wizard of Oz “man behind the curtain” delivery
approach. Both focus on providing an authentic front end for
users to experience but lack functioning back ends.

Trials represent the most elaborate type of test design and

use fully functional prototypes, with authentic front and back
ends. They often rely on accompanying methods like control
groups and pretest/post-test designs to ensure more rigorous
measurement of outcomes.

Choosing the type of test that best suits your circumstances and
stage of experimentation requires stepping back to consider a set of
fundamental questions about the concept to be tested, your goals,
the environment you are operating in, and those you are designing
for. As your concept moves through cycles of testing, you will run
multiple tests. So, you will revisit this step again and again, repeating
these fundamental questions at each stage or round, refining your
plan as your concept evolves.

Keep in mind that no test will allow you to conclusively “prove” that
your concept is a good one. Until you build and pilot it in the real
world, you cannot know for sure. Your goal in early tests is to better
manage the risks of investing in any given new concept by assessing
whether you are directionally correct enough, relative to your critical
assumptions, to move to the next stage of experimentation.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 America was opened after the feudal mischief was spent, and so
the people made a good start. We began well. No inquisition here,
no kings, no nobles, no dominant church. Here heresy has lost its
terrors. We have eight or ten religions in every large town, and the
most that comes of it is a degree or two on the thermometer of
fashion; a pew in a particular church gives an easier entrance to the
subscription ball.
We began with freedom, and are defended from shocks now for a
century by the facility with which through popular assemblies every
necessary measure of reform can instantly be carried. A congress is
a standing insurrection, and escapes the violence of accumulated
grievance. As the globe keeps its identity by perpetual change, so
our civil system, by perpetual appeal to the people and acceptance
of its reforms.
The government is acquainted with the opinions of all classes,
knows the leading men in the middle class, knows the leaders of the
humblest class. The President comes near enough to these; if he
does not, the caucus does, the primary ward and town-meeting, and
what is important does reach him.
The men, the women, all over this land shrill their exclamations of
impatience and indignation at what is short-coming or is unbecoming
in the government,—at the want of humanity, of morality,—ever on
broad grounds of general justice, and not on the class-feeling which
narrows the perception of English, French, German people at home.
In this fact, that we are a nation of individuals, that we have a
highly intellectual organization, that we can see and feel moral
distinctions, and that on such an organization sooner or later the
moral laws must tell, to such ears must speak,—in this is our hope.
For if the prosperity of this country has been merely the obedience of
man to the guiding of Nature,—of great rivers and prairies,—yet is
there fate above fate, if we choose to spread this language; or if
there is fate in corn and cotton, so is there fate in thought,—this,
namely, that the largest thought and the widest love are born to
victory, and must prevail.
 The revolution is the work of no man, but the eternal
effervescence of Nature. It never did not work. And we say that
revolutions beat all the insurgents, be they never so determined and
politic; that the great interests of mankind, being at every moment
through ages in favor of justice and the largest liberty, will always,
from time to time, gain on the adversary and at last win the day.
Never country had such a fortune, as men call fortune, as this, in its
geography, its history, and in its majestic possibilities.
We have much to learn, much to correct,—a great deal of lying
vanity. The spread eagle must fold his foolish wings and be less of a
peacock; must keep his wings to carry the thunderbolt when he is
commanded. We must realize our rhetoric and our rituals. Our
national flag is not affecting, as it should be, because it does not
represent the population of the United States, but some Baltimore or
Chicago or Cincinnati or Philadelphia caucus; not union or justice,
but selfishness and cunning. If we never put on the liberty-cap until
we were freemen by love and self-denial, the liberty-cap would mean
something. I wish to see America not like the old powers of the earth,
grasping, exclusive and narrow, but a benefactor such as no country
ever was, hospitable to all nations, legislating for all nationalities.
Nations were made to help each other as much as families were;
and all advancement is by ideas, and not by brute force or mechanic
force.
In this country, with our practical understanding, there is, at
present, a great sensualism, a headlong devotion to trade and to the
conquest of the continent,—to each man as large a share of the
same as he can carve for himself,—an extravagant confidence in our
talent and activity, which becomes, whilst successful, a scornful
materialism,—but with the fault, of course, that it has no depth, no
reserved force whereon to fall back when a reverse comes.
That repose which is the ornament and ripeness of man is not
American. That repose which indicates a faith in the laws of the
universe,—a faith that they will fulfil themselves, and are not to be
impeded, transgressed or accelerated. Our people are too slight and
vain. They are easily elated and easily depressed. See how fast they
extend the fleeting fabric of their trade,—not at all considering the
remote reaction and bankruptcy, but with the same abandonment to
the moment and the facts of the hour as the Esquimau who sells his
bed in the morning. Our people act on the moment, and from
external impulse. They all lean on some other, and this
superstitiously, and not from insight of his merit. They follow a fact;
they follow success, and not skill. Therefore, as soon as the success
stops and the admirable man blunders, they quit him; already they
remember that they long ago suspected his judgment, and they
transfer the repute of judgment to the next prosperous person who
has not yet blundered. Of course this levity makes them as easily
despond. It seems as if history gave no account of any society in
which despondency came so readily to heart as we see it and feel it
in ours. Young men at thirty and even earlier lose all spring and
vivacity, and if they fail in their first enterprise throw up the game.
The source of mischief is the extreme difficulty with which men are
roused from the torpor of every day. Blessed is all that agitates the
mass, breaks up this torpor, and begins motion. Corpora non agunt
nisi soluta; the chemical rule is true in mind. Contrast, change,
interruption, are necessary to new activity and new combinations.
If a temperate wise man should look over our American society, I
think the first danger that would excite his alarm would be the
European influences on this country. We buy much of Europe that
does not make us better men; and mainly the expensiveness which
is ruining that country. We import trifles, dancers, singers, laces,
books of patterns, modes, gloves and cologne, manuals of Gothic
architecture, steam-made ornaments. America is provincial. It is an
immense Halifax. See the secondariness and aping of foreign and
English life, that runs through this country, in building, in dress, in
eating, in books. Every village, every city, has its architecture, its
costume, its hotel, its private house, its church, from England.
Our politics threaten her. Her manners threaten us. Life is grown
and growing so costly that it threatens to kill us. A man is coming,
here as there, to value himself on what he can buy. Worst of all, his
expense is not his own, but a far-off copy of Osborne House or the
Elysée. The tendency of this is to make all men alike; to extinguish
individualism and choke up all the channels of inspiration from God
in man. We lose our invention and descend into imitation. A man no
longer conducts his own life. It is manufactured for him. The tailor
makes your dress; the baker your bread; the upholsterer, from an
imported book of patterns, your furniture; the Bishop of London your
faith.
In the planters of this country, in the seventeenth century, the
conditions of the country, combined with the impatience of arbitrary
power which they brought from England, forced them to a wonderful
personal independence and to a certain heroic planting and trading.
Later this strength appeared in the solitudes of the West, where a
man is made a hero by the varied emergencies of his lonely farm,
and neighborhoods must combine against the Indians, or the horse-
thieves, or the river rowdies, by organizing themselves into
committees of vigilance. Thus the land and sea educate the people,
and bring out presence of mind, self-reliance, and hundred-handed
activity. These are the people for an emergency. They are not to be
surprised, and can find a way out of any peril. This rough and ready
force becomes them, and makes them fit citizens and civilizers. But if
we found them clinging to English traditions, which are graceful
enough at home, as the English Church, and entailed estates, and
distrust of popular election, we should feel this reactionary, and
absurdly out of place.
Let the passion for America cast out the passion for Europe. Here
let there be what the earth waits for,—exalted manhood. What this
country longs for is personalities, grand persons, to counteract its
materialities. For it is the rule of the universe that corn shall serve
man, and not man corn.
They who find America insipid—they for whom London and Paris
have spoiled their own homes—can be spared to return to those
cities. I not only see a career at home for more genius than we have,
but for more than there is in the world.
The class of which I speak make themselves merry without duties.
They sit in decorated club-houses in the cities, and burn tobacco and
play whist; in the country they sit idle in stores and bar-rooms, and
burn tobacco, and gossip and sleep. They complain of the flatness of
American life; “America has no illusions, no romance.” They have no
perception of its destiny. They are not Americans.
The felon is the logical extreme of the epicure and coxcomb.
Selfish luxury is the end of both, though in one it is decorated with
refinements, and in the other brutal. But my point now is, that this
spirit is not American.
Our young men lack idealism. A man for success must not be pure
idealist, then he will practically fail; but he must have ideas, must
obey ideas, or he might as well be the horse he rides on. A man
does not want to be sun-dazzled, sun-blind; but every man must
have glimmer enough to keep him from knocking his head against
the walls. And it is in the interest of civilization and good society and
friendship, that I dread to hear of well-born, gifted and amiable men,
that they have this indifference, disposing them to this despair.
Of no use are the men who study to do exactly as was done
before, who can never understand that to-day is a new day. There
never was such a combination as this of ours, and the rules to meet
it are not set down in any history. We want men of original perception
and original action, who can open their eyes wider than to a
nationality,—namely, to considerations of benefit to the human race,
—can act in the interest of civilization; men of elastic, men of moral
mind, who can live in the moment and take a step forward.
Columbus was no backward-creeping crab, nor was Martin Luther,
nor John Adams, nor Patrick Henry, nor Thomas Jefferson; and the
Genius or Destiny of America is no log or sluggard, but a man
incessantly advancing, as the shadow on the dial’s face, or the
heavenly body by whose light it is marked.
The flowering of civilization is the finished man, the man of sense,
of grace, of accomplishment, of social power,—the gentleman. What
hinders that he be born here? The new times need a new man, the
complemental man, whom plainly this country must furnish. Freer
swing his arms; farther pierce his eyes; more forward and forthright
his whole build and rig than the Englishman’s, who, we see, is much
imprisoned in his backbone.
 ’Tis certain that our civilization is yet incomplete, it has not ended
nor given sign of ending in a hero. ’Tis a wild democracy; the riot of
mediocrities and dishonesties and fudges. Ours is the age of the
omnibus, of the third person plural, of Tammany Hall. Is it that Nature
has only so much vital force, and must dilute it if it is to be multiplied
into millions? The beautiful is never plentiful. Then Illinois and
Indiana, with their spawning loins, must needs be ordinary.
It is not a question whether we shall be a multitude of people. No,
that has been conspicuously decided already; but whether we shall
be the new nation, the guide and lawgiver of all nations, as having
clearly chosen and firmly held the simplest and best rule of political
society.
Now, if the spirit which years ago armed this country against
rebellion, and put forth such gigantic energy in the charity of the
Sanitary Commission, could be waked to the conserving and
creating duty of making the laws just and humane, it were to enroll a
great constituency of religious, self-respecting, brave, tender, faithful
obeyers of duty, lovers of men, filled with loyalty to each other, and
with the simple and sublime purpose of carrying out in private and in
public action the desire and need of mankind.
Here is the post where the patriot should plant himself; here the
altar where virtuous young men, those to whom friendship is the
dearest covenant, should bind each other to loyalty; where genius
should kindle its fires and bring forgotten truth to the eyes of men.
It is not possible to extricate yourself from the questions in which
your age is involved. Let the good citizen perform the duties put on
him here and now. It is not by heads reverted to the dying
Demosthenes, or to Luther, or to Wallace, or to George Fox, or to
George Washington, that you can combat the dangers and dragons
that beset the United States at this time. I believe this cannot be
accomplished by dunces or idlers, but requires docility, sympathy,
and religious receiving from higher principles; for liberty, like religion,
is a short and hasty fruit, and like all power subsists only by new
rallyings on the source of inspiration.
 Power can be generous. The very grandeur of the means which
offer themselves to us should suggest grandeur in the direction of
our expenditure. If our mechanic arts are unsurpassed in usefulness,
if we have taught the river to make shoes and nails and carpets, and
the bolt of heaven to write our letters like a Gillot pen, let these
wonders work for honest humanity, for the poor, for justice, genius
and the public good.[237] Let us realize that this country, the last
found, is the great charity of God to the human race.
America should affirm and establish that in no instance shall the
guns go in advance of the present right. We shall not make coups
d’état and afterwards explain and pay, but shall proceed like William
Penn, or whatever other Christian or humane person who treats with
the Indian or the foreigner, on principles of honest trade and mutual
advantage. We can see that the Constitution and the law in America
must be written on ethical principles, so that the entire power of the
spiritual world shall hold the citizen loyal, and repel the enemy as by
force of nature. It should be mankind’s bill of rights, or Royal
Proclamation of the Intellect ascending the throne, announcing its
good pleasure that now, once for all, the world shall be governed by
common sense and law of morals.
The end of all political struggle is to establish morality as the basis
of all legislation. ’Tis not free institutions, ’tis not a democracy that is
the end,—no, but only the means. Morality is the object of
government. We want a state of things in which crime will not pay; a
state of things which allows every man the largest liberty compatible
with the liberty of every other man.
Humanity asks that government shall not be ashamed to be tender
and paternal, but that democratic institutions shall be more
thoughtful for the interests of women, for the training of children, and
for the welfare of sick and unable persons, and serious care of
criminals, than was ever any the best government of the Old World.
The genius of the country has marked out our true policy,—
opportunity. Opportunity of civil rights, of education, of personal
power, and not less of wealth; doors wide open. If I could have it,—
free trade with all the world without toll or custom-houses, invitation
as we now make to every nation, to every race and skin, white men,
red men, yellow men, black men; hospitality of fair field and equal
laws to all.[238] Let them compete, and success to the strongest, the
wisest and the best. The land is wide enough, the soil has bread for
all.
I hope America will come to have its pride in being a nation of
servants, and not of the served. How can men have any other
ambition where the reason has not suffered a disastrous eclipse?
Whilst every man can say I serve,—to the whole extent of my being I
apply my faculty to the service of mankind in my especial place,—he
therein sees and shows a reason for his being in the world, and is
not a moth or incumbrance in it.
The distinction and end of a soundly constituted man is his labor.
Use is inscribed on all his faculties. Use is the end to which he
exists. As the tree exists for its fruit, so a man for his work. A fruitless
plant, an idle animal, does not stand in the universe. They are all
toiling, however secretly or slowly, in the province assigned them,
and to a use in the economy of the world; the higher and more
complex organizations to higher and more catholic service. And man
seems to play, by his instincts and activity, a certain part that even
tells on the general face of the planet, drains swamps, leads rivers
into dry countries for their irrigation, perforates forests and stony
mountain chains with roads, hinders the inroads of the sea on the
continent, as if dressing the globe for happier races.
On the whole, I know that the cosmic results will be the same,
whatever the daily events may be. Happily we are under better
guidance than of statesmen. Pennsylvania coal-mines and New York
shipping and free labor, though not idealists, gravitate in the ideal
direction. Nothing less large than justice can keep them in good
temper. Justice satisfies everybody, and justice alone. No monopoly
must be foisted in, no weak party or nationality sacrificed, no coward
compromise conceded to a strong partner. Every one of these is the
seed of vice, war and national disorganization. It is our part to carry
out to the last the ends of liberty and justice. We shall stand, then,
for vast interests; north and south, east and west will be present to
our minds, and our vote will be as if they voted, and we shall know
that our vote secures the foundations of the state, good will, liberty
and security of traffic and of production, and mutual increase of good
will in the great interests.
Our helm is given up to a better guidance than our own; the
course of events is quite too strong for any helmsman, and our little
wherry is taken in tow by the ship of the great Admiral which knows
the way, and has the force to draw men and states and planets to
their good.
Such and so potent is this high method by which the Divine
Providence sends the chiefest benefits under the mask of calamities,
that I do not think we shall by any perverse ingenuity prevent the
blessing.
In seeing this guidance of events, in seeing this felicity without
example that has rested on the Union thus far, I find new confidence
for the future.
I could heartily wish that our will and endeavor were more active
parties to the work. But I see in all directions the light breaking.
Trade and government will not alone be the favored aims of
mankind, but every useful, every elegant art, every exercise of the
imagination, the height of reason, the noblest affection, the purest
religion will find their home in our institutions, and write our laws for
the benefit of men.[239]
 NOTES

THE LORD’S SUPPER

Mr. Emerson did not wish to have his sermons published. All that
was worth saving in them, he said, would be found in the Essays.
Yet it seemed best, to Mr. Cabot and to Mr. Emerson’s family, that
this one sermon should be preserved. A record of a turning-point in
his life, it showed at once his thought and his character; for he not
only gives the reasons why he believes the rite not authoritatively
enjoined, and hence recommends its modification or discontinuance,
but with serenity and sweetness renders back his trust into his
people’s hands, since he cannot see his way longer to exercise it as
most of them desire.
In the month of June, 1832, Mr. Emerson had proposed to the
church, apparently with hope of their approval, that the Communion
be observed only as a festival of commemoration, without the use of
the elements. The committee to whom the proposal was referred
made a report expressing confidence in him, but declining to advise
the change, as the matter was one which they could not properly be
called upon to decide.
The question then came back to the pastor, whether he was willing
to remain in his place and administer the rite in the usual form.
He went alone to the White Mountains, then seldom visited, to
consider the grave question whether he was prepared, rather than to
continue the performance of a part of his priestly office from which
his instincts and beliefs recoiled, to sacrifice a position of advantage
for usefulness to his people to whom he was bound by many ties,
and in preparation for which he had spent long years. He wrote, at
Conway, New Hampshire: “Here among the mountains the pinions of
thought should be strong, and one should see the errors of men from
a calmer height of love and wisdom.” His diary at Ethan Allan
Crawford’s contains his doubts and questionings, which Mr. Cabot
has given in his Memoir. Yet there was but one answer for him, and
after a fortnight, he came back clear in his mind to give his decision,
embodied in this sermon, to his people. On the same day that it was
preached, he formally resigned his pastorate. The church was loth to
part with him. It was hoped that some other arrangement might be
made. Mr. Cabot learned that “several meetings were held and the
proprietors of pews were called in, as having ‘an undoubted right to
retain Mr. Emerson as their pastor, without reference to the
opposition of the church.’ At length, after two adjournments and
much discussion, it was decided by thirty votes against twenty-four
to accept his resignation. It was voted at the same time to continue
his salary for the present.”
Thus Mr. Emerson and his people parted in all kindness, but, as
Mr. Cabot truly said, their difference of views on this rite “was in truth
only the symptom of a deeper difference which would in any case
sooner or later have made it impossible for him to retain his office; a
disagreement not so much about particular doctrines or observances
as about their sanction, the authority on which all doctrines and
observances rest.”
In the farewell letter which Mr. Emerson wrote to the people of his
church, he said:—
“I rejoice to believe that my ceasing to exercise the pastoral office
among you does not make any real change in our spiritual relation to
each other. Whatever is most desirable and excellent therein
remains to us. For, truly speaking, whoever provokes me to a good
act or thought has given me a pledge of his fidelity to virtue,—he has
come under bonds to adhere to that cause to which we are jointly
attached. And so I say to all you who have been my counsellors and
coöperators in our Christian walk, that I am wont to see in your faces
the seals and certificates of our mutual obligations. If we have
conspired from week to week in the sympathy and expression of
devout sentiments; if we have received together the unspeakable gift
of God’s truth; if we have studied together the sense of any divine
word; or striven together in any charity; or conferred together for the
relief or instruction of any brother; if together we have laid down the
dead in a pious hope; or held up the babe into the baptism of
Christianity; above all, if we have shared in any habitual
acknowledgment of the benignant God, whose omnipresence raises
and glorifies the meanest offices and the lowest ability, and opens
heaven in every heart that worships him,—then indeed we are
united, we are mutually debtors to each other of faith and hope,
engaged to persist and confirm each other’s hearts in obedience to
the Gospel. We shall not feel that the nominal changes and little
separations of this world can release us from the strong cordage of
this spiritual bond. And I entreat you to consider how truly blessed
will have been our connection if, in this manner, the memory of it
shall serve to bind each one of us more strictly to the practice of our
several duties.”
Page 18, note 1. The doctrine of the offices of Jesus, even in the
Unitarianism of Dr. Channing, was never congenial to Mr. Emerson’s
mind. He notes the same with regard to his father, and even to his
Aunt Mary, in spite of her Calvinism. Any interposed personality
between the Creator and the created was repugnant to him. Even in
March, 1831, he is considering in his journal that his hearers will say,
“To what purpose is this attempt to explain away so safe and holy a
doctrine as that of the Holy Spirit? Why unsettle or disturb a faith
which presents to many minds a helpful medium by which they
approach the idea of God?” and he answers, “And this question I will
meet. It is because I think the popular views of this principle are
pernicious, because it does put a medium, because it removes the
idea of God from the mind. It leaves some events, some things,
some thoughts, out of the power of Him who causes every event,
every flower, every thought. The tremendous idea, as I may well call
it, of God is screened from the soul.... And least of all can we believe
—Reason will not let us—that the presiding Creator commands all
matter and never descends into the secret chambers of the Soul.
There he is most present. The Soul rules over matter. Matter may
pass away like a mote in the sunbeam, may be absorbed into the
immensity of God, as a mist is absorbed into the heat of the Sun—
but the soul is the kingdom of God, the abode of love, of truth, of
virtue.”
 Page 19, note 1. In the hope of satisfying those of his people who
held to the letter of the Scriptural Law, Mr. Emerson made the
foregoing clear statement with regard to the authority for the rite,
from the professional point of view. It seems quite unlike his usual
method, and there is little doubt that in it appears the influence of his
elder brother, William, whose honest doubts had led him to abandon
even earlier the profession of his fathers. In the introductory note to
the chapter on Goethe, in Representative Men, is given an account
of his unsuccessful pilgrimage to Weimar, in hopes that the great
mind of Germany could solve these doubts. There is a letter still
preserved, written by William, soon after his return, to his venerable
kinsman at Concord, Dr. Ripley, in which he explains with great
clearness his own reasons for not believing that the Communion rite
was enjoined by Jesus for perpetual observance. The argument on
scriptural grounds there clearly stated is substantially the same as
that which his younger brother makes use of in the beginning of this
sermon. Thus far he has spoken of outward authority; from this point
onward he speaks from within—the way native to him.
Page 25, note 1. Mr. Emerson left the struggles of the Past behind,
and did not care to recall them. Thus, writing of Lucretia Mott, whom
he met when giving a course of lectures in Philadelphia, in January,
1843, he said:—
“Me she taxed with living out of the world, and I was not much
flattered that her interest in me respected my rejection of an
ordinance, sometime, somewhere. Also yesterday—for
Philadelphian ideas, like love, do creep where they cannot go—I was
challenged on the subject of the Lord’s Supper, and with great
slowness and pain was forced to recollect the grounds of my dissent
in that particular. You may be sure I was very tardy with my texts.”
Mr. Emerson’s journal during the period of trial and decision, in the
mountains, shows that he was reading with great interest the life of
George Fox. The simplicity of the Society of Friends, their aversion
to forms and trust in the inward light, always appealed to him.
In his essay on The Preacher he says:—
 “The supposed embarrassments to young clergymen exist only to
feeble wills.... That gray deacon, or respectable matron with
Calvinistic antecedents, you can readily see, would not have
presented any obstacle to the march of St. Bernard or of George
Fox, of Luther or of Theodore Parker.” This hints at the help he had
found in the Quaker’s history in his time of need.

HISTORICAL DISCOURSE AT CONCORD

Mr. Emerson’s Discourse was printed soon after its delivery, and
with it, in an Appendix, the following notice of the celebration of the
second centennial anniversary of the incorporation of the town, sent
to him by “a friend who thought it desirable to preserve the
remembrance of some particulars of this historical festival.”

“At a meeting of the town of Concord, in April last, it was

voted to celebrate the Second Centennial Anniversary of the
settlement of the town, on the 12th September following. A
committee of fifteen were chosen to make the arrangements.
This committee appointed Ralph Waldo Emerson, Orator, and
Rev. Dr. Ripley and Rev. Mr. Wilder, Chaplains of the Day.
Hon. John Keyes was chosen President of the Day.
“On the morning of the 12th September, at half past 10
o’clock, the children of the town, to the number of about 500,
moved in procession to the Common in front of the old church
and court-house and there opened to the right and left,
awaiting the procession of citizens. At 11 o’clock, the Concord
Light Infantry, under Captain Moore, and the Artillery under
Captain Buttrick, escorted the civic procession, under the
direction of Moses Prichard as Chief Marshal, from
Shepherd’s hotel through the lines of children to the Meeting-
house. The South gallery had been reserved for ladies, and
the North gallery for the children; but (it was a good omen) the
children overran the space assigned for their accommodation,
and were sprinkled throughout the house, and ranged on
seats along the aisles. The old Meeting-house, which was
propped to sustain the unwonted weight of the multitude
within its walls, was built in 1712, thus having stood for more
than half the period to which our history goes back. Prayers
were offered and the Scriptures read by the aged minister of
the town, Rev. Ezra Ripley, now in the 85th year of his age;—
another interesting feature in this scene of reminiscences. A
very pleasant and impressive part of the services in the
church was the singing of the 107th psalm, from the New
England version of the psalms made by Eliot, Mather, and
others, in 1639, and used in the church in this town in the
days of Peter Bulkeley. The psalm was read a line at a time,
after the ancient fashion, from the Deacons’ seat, and so
sung to the tune of St. Martin’s by the whole congregation
standing.
“Ten of the surviving veterans who were in arms at the
Bridge, on the 19th April, 1775, honored the festival with their
presence. Their names are Abel Davis, Thaddeus Blood, Tilly
Buttrick, John Hosmer, of Concord; Thomas Thorp, Solomon
Smith, John Oliver, Aaron Jones, of Acton; David Lane, of
Bedford; Amos Baker, of Lincoln.
“On leaving the church, the procession again formed, and
moved to a large tent nearly opposite Shepherd’s hotel, under
which dinner was prepared, and the company sat down to the
tables, to the number of four hundred. We were honored with
the presence of distinguished guests, among whom were
Lieutenant-Governor Armstrong, Judge Davis, Alden Bradford
(descended from the 2d governor of Plymouth Colony), Hon.
Edward Everett, Hon. Stephen C. Phillips of Salem, Philip
Hone, Esq., of New York, General Dearborn, and Lieutenant-
Colonel R. C. Winthrop (descended from the 1st governor of
Massachusetts). Letters were read from several gentlemen
expressing their regret at being deprived of the pleasure of
being present on the occasion. The character of the speeches
and sentiments at the dinner were manly and affectionate, in
keeping with the whole temper of the day.
 “On leaving the dinner-table, the invited guests, with many
of the citizens, repaired to the court-house to pay their
respects to the ladies of Concord, who had there, with their
friends, partaken of an elegant collation, and now politely
offered coffee to the gentlemen. The hall, in which the
collation was spread, had been decorated by fair hands with
festoons of flowers, and wreaths of evergreen, and hung with
pictures of the Fathers of the Town. Crowded as it was with
graceful forms and happy faces, and resounding with the hum
of animated conversation, it was itself a beautiful living
picture. Compared with the poverty and savageness of the
scene which the same spot presented two hundred years
ago, it was a brilliant reverse of the medal; and could scarcely
fail, like all the parts of the holiday, to lead the reflecting mind
to thoughts of that Divine Providence, which, in every
generation, has been our tower of defence and horn of
blessing.
“At sunset the company separated and retired to their
homes; and the evening of this day of excitement was as
quiet as a Sabbath throughout the village.”

Within the year, Mr. Emerson had come to make his home for life
in the ancestral town, and had become a householder. Two days
after the festival, he drove to Plymouth in a chaise, and was there
married to Lidian Jackson, and immediately brought his bride to her
Concord home.
His aged step-grandfather was the senior chaplain at the
Celebration, and his brother Charles, who was to live with him in the
new home, was one of the marshals.
In preparation for this address Mr. Emerson made diligent
examination of the old town records, and spent a fortnight in
Cambridge consulting the works on early New England in the
College Library. I reproduce most of his references to his authorities
exactly, although there are, no doubt, newer editions of some of the
works.
 Page 30, note 1. This story is from Bede’s Ecclesiastical History
(chapter xiii., Bohn’s Antiquarian Library). Mr. Emerson used it in full
as the exordium of his essay on Immortality, in Letters and Social
Aims.
Page 30, note 2. The poem “Hamatreya,” wherein appear the
names of many of these first settlers, might well be read in
connection with the opening passages of this address.
Mr. Emerson’s right of descent to speak as representative of Peter
Bulkeley, who was the spiritual arm of the settlement, as Simon
Willard was its sword-arm, may here be shown: Rev. Joseph
Emerson of Mendon (son of Thomas of Ipswich, the first of the name
in this country) married Elizabeth, daughter of Rev. Edward Bulkeley,
who succeeded his father, the Rev. Peter Bulkeley, as minister of
Concord. Edward, the son of Joseph of Mendon and Elizabeth
Bulkeley, was father of Rev. Joseph Emerson of Malden, who was
father of Rev. William Emerson of Concord, who was father of Rev.
William Emerson of Harvard and Boston, the father of Ralph Waldo
Emerson.
Page 31, note 1. Neal’s History of New England, vol. i., p. 132.
Page 31, note 2. Neal, vol. i., p. 321.
Page 31, note 3. Shattuck’s History of Concord, p. 158.
Page 32, note 1. On September 2, 1635, the General Court
passed this order:—
“It is ordered that there shalbe a plantac̃on att Musketequid & that
there shalbe 6 myles of land square to belong to it, & that the
inhabitants thereof shall have three yeares im̃ unities from all publ[ic]
charges except traineings; Further, that when any that plant there
shall have occac̃on of carryeing of goods thither, they shall repaire to
two of the nexte magistrates where the teames are, whoe shall have
the power for a yeare to presse draughts, att reasonable rates, to be
payed by the owners of the goods, to transport their goods thither att
seasonable tymes: & the name of the place is changed & here after
to be called Concord.”
Page 32, note 2. Shattuck, p. 5.
 Page 33, note 1. In his lecture on Boston (published in the volume
Natural History of Intellect) Mr. Emerson gives an amusing
enumeration of some troubles which seemed so great to the
newcomers from the Old World: he mentions their fear of lions, the
accident to John Smith from “the most poisonous tail of a fish called
a sting-ray,” the circumstance of the overpowering effect of the sweet
fern upon the Concord party, and the intoxicating effect of wild
grapes eaten by the Norse explorers, and adds: “Nature has never
again indulged in these exasperations. It seems to have been the
last outrage ever committed by the sting-rays, or by the sweet fern,
or by the fox-grapes. They have been of peaceable behavior ever
since.”
Page 34, note 1. Johnson’s Wonder-Working Providence, chap.
xxxv. Mr. Emerson abridged and slightly altered some sentences.
Page 35, note 1. Mourt, Beginning of Plymouth, 1621, p. 60.
Page 35, note 2. Johnson, p. 56. Josselyn, in his New England’s
Rarities Discovered, speaks with respect of “Squashes, but more
truly squontersquashes; a kind of mellon, or rather gourd; ... some of
these are green; some yellow; some longish like a gourd; others
round, like an apple: all of them pleasant food, boyled and buttered,
and seasoned with spice. But the yellow squash—called an apple-
squash (because like an apple) and about the bigness of a pome-
water is the best kind.” Wood, in his New England Prospect, says:
“In summer, when their corn is spent, isquotersquashes is their best
bread, a fruit much like a pumpion.”
Page 36, note 1. Nashawtuck, a small and shapely hill between
the Musketaquid and the Assabet streams, at their point of union,
was a pleasant and convenient headquarters for a sagamore of a
race whose best roadway for travel and transportation was a deep,
quiet stream, the fish of which they ate, and also used for manure for
their cornfields along the bluffs. Indian graves have been found on
this hill.
Page 36, note 2. Josselyn’s Voyages to New England, 1638.
 Page 36, note 3. Hutchinson’s History of Massachusetts, vol. i.,
chap. 6.
Page 36, note 4. Thomas Morton, New England Canaan, p. 47.
Page 37, note 1. Shattuck, p. 6.
The old Middlesex Hotel, which stood during the greater part of the
nineteenth century on the southwest side of the Common, opposite
the court- and town-houses, had fallen into decay in 1900, and was
bought and taken down by the town as an improvement to the public
square to commemorate the one hundred and twenty-fifth
anniversary of Concord Fight. It is probable that Jethro’s Oak, under
which the treaty was made, stood a little nearer the house of Rev.
Peter Bulkeley, the site of which, about one hundred paces distant
on the Lowell road, is now marked by a stone and bronze tablet.
Page 38, note 1. Depositions taken in 1684, and copied in the first
volume of the Town Records.
Page 39, note 1. Johnson’s Wonder-Working Providence.
Page 39, note 2. New England’s Plantation.
Page 39, note 3. E. W.’s Letter in Mourt, 1621.
Page 40, note 1. Peter Bulkeley’s Gospel Covenant; preached at
Concord in New England. 2d edition, London, 1651, p. 432.
Page 41, note 1. See petition in Shattuck’s History, p. 14.
Page 41, note 2. Shattuck, p. 14. This was the meadow and
upland on the Lowell road, one mile north of Concord, just beyond
the river. On the farm stands the unpainted “lean-to” house, now
owned by the daughters of the late Edmund Hosmer.
Page 42, note 1. Concord Town Records.
Page 43, note 1. Bancroft, History of the United States, vol. i., p.
389.
Page 44, note 1. Savage’s Winthrop, vol. i., p. 114.
Page 44, note 2. Colony Records, vol. i.
Page 44, note 3. See Hutchinson’s Collection, p. 287.
 Page 46, note 1. Winthrop’s Journal, vol. i., pp. 128, 129, and the
editor’s note.
Page 46, note 2. Winthrop’s Journal, vol. ii., p. 160.
Page 48, note 1. Town Records.
With the exception of the anecdotes in this and the following
sentence, almost the whole of this account of the theory and practice
of the New England town-meeting was used by Mr. Emerson in his
oration, given in December, 1870, before the New England Society
in New York. The greater part of the matter used in that address is
included in the lecture on Boston, in the volume Natural History of
Intellect.
The New England Society of New York recently published the
Orations delivered before it previous to 1871, including Mr.
Emerson’s, as far as it could be recovered from the scattered
manuscript, and the newspaper reports of the time.
Page 50, note 1. Hutchinson’s Collection, p. 27.
Page 51, note 1. Shattuck, p. 20. “The Government, 13 Nov.,
1644, ordered the county courts to take care of the Indians residing
within their several shires, to have them civilized, and to take order,
from time to time, to have them instructed in the knowledge of God.”
Page 52, note 1. Shepard’s Clear Sunshine of the Gospel,
London, 1648.
Page 52, note 2. These rules are given in Shattuck’s History, pp.
22-24, and were called “Conclusions and orders made and agreed
upon by divers Sachems and other principal men amongst the
Indians at Concord in the end of the eleventh Month (called January)
An. 1646.”
The following are interesting specimens of these:—
Rule 2. “That there shall be no more Powwawing amongst the
Indians. And if any shall hereafter powwaw, both he that shall
powwaw, and he that shall procure him to powwaw, shall pay twenty
shillings apiece.”