In 1982 Tom Peters and Robert Waterman published In Search of Excellence. They listed eight attributes of excellent companies. The first was “A bias for action.” A report in the Christian Science Monitor that December summed up the authors’ view: “Experimenting and acting on an idea is much better than being paralyzed by proposals or fear of change.”
In a note for a later edition, the authors explained the phrase: “In its simplest terms, this says ‘get out there and try something.'” They added: “Just as you don’t learn anything in science without experimenting, you don’t learn anything in business without trying, failing, and trying again.”