Information Access and Analytics are Vital in Subjective World of Big Data

February 7, 2013

Are decisions in the business world ultimately based on rational and objective facts? Or are they based on intuition? University of Virginia, Darden School Professor Robert Carraway weighs in on the subject in his recent guest post on Forbes. The article “Meeting the Big Data Challenge: Don’t Be Objective” expands on these questions.

Carraway reports that the Corporate Executive Board of U.Va.’s Darden School of Business created a new tool called Insight IQ. This tool is used to assess the tendency of managers to rely on intuition versus analysis. It turns out that 19% of over 5,000 managers in major global corporations are “Visceral decision makers” that rely almost exclusively on intuition.

The author argues that big data and more logical, objective analytical tools and frameworks places even more weight on the role of intuition.

This is one reason why I think so many CEO’s say they are far more likely to rely on intuition than analysis in making decisions.  Almost by definition, the issues they deal with are complex and multi-faceted, impossible to completely model or holistically analyze.  My experience is that every CEO I know DOES use analysis, but what is far more visible to them is how they have to rely on intuition to fill in the gaps, and this is what they self-report.

If intuition is inevitable in the process of making decisions then it is even more important to rely on technological solutions to offer the analysis which intuition becomes informed by. We suggest taking a look at PolySpot solutions for enterprise information access.

Megan Feil, February 7, 2013

Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search.

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