The Dualities of Entrepreneurship

Data and Gut Feeling

If you could be 100% certain, a decision should be very easy to make. Or should you trust your gut feeling, what could all that data even tell you? (insert favourite populist here). Of course, in most situations you have some data, but you don't know everything for sure. You might have data about a bump in sales from last year when you promoted that discount code, but will it be the same this year? And what about external forces, like rain that will impact your protest or the presence of a crowd on your performance?

Data and gut feelings go hand in hand. In 'Blink', Malcolm Gladwell makes the argument in favour of trusting our gut feelings. The example he uses is of a Greek statue that has passed all the authenticity tests, but it didn't feel right to one of the board members of the museum. After the museum has bought the statue, it turns out it was a fake. This is a clear case for gut feeling, right?

Gut feeling is based on 'adaptive unconscious', which I loosely translate as the culmination of your experiences that send a signal to your brain which is too fast to be reasoned with. Or in other words, it's based on data, it is years of experience, maybe even solid statistics, but something that gets interpreted without you being conscious of it.

Therefore I feel that your decisions should always be based on a healthy dose of gut feeling that is based on data.

Here is some more from Simply Brilliant by Wiliam C. Taylor. Double Vision, the capacity to act with confidence in terms of what's always been done, even as they are doubting, questioning, and probing their assumptions. The data sometimes doesn't exist. Yet without such leaps, companies and people remain stuck in the status quo.

Read more about dualities in the extended blog at floriswolswijk.com