Think Flat

Information analytics is highly neglected field but it maybe because a lot of people tend to think like your first thought, that no amount of information will be enough to make correct decision 100% of the time.

I still think that intuition is a big part of decision making although most of it comes from experience. Information analytics can give you a second option but if that option is contradictory to your views based on past experience then most people will fall on their intuitions to make decisions.

Decision making based on Intuition may be considered Straight from the gut, but It should be ideal when the impact of the decision is lesser and is a kind of experimentation. If it looks to be failing in the process of implementation, it should be stopped before it creates bigger damage instead of hoping to give positive result. Even if the consequence is not positive, it remains a good learning (ofcourse if one is open for experimentation).

And though Decision making using 'Information Analytics' is considered scientific and accurate, what is much more important is the 'Human Intrepretation of Analytics'. Not everybody intreprets a set of analytics in the same way especially when the data is really complex. If interpretation goes wrong, then the decision based on Analytics may also go haywire. It would be better to simplify the complex data and interpret it. To be precise, 'SIMPLE' datas may help better decision making than the 'COMPLEX' ones.

The How to Become a Creative Genius article at lifehack.org and this online decision maker (http://www.beventure.com) might give you some ideas for better decision making.

The question is not whether we should rely on intuition or not, but when we should rely on intuition. My doctoral research in innovation management explored this topic.

Intuition is experienced in all the stages of the innovation process and is relied under different uncertainty conditions

The uncertainty conditions are:
1. Limited time
2. Limited facts
3. Lack of precedence
4. High impact of failure (high investment)
5. Multiple alternatives
6. Multiple and complex interconnected technical issues

My study found that we can rely on intuition when
1. The person is an expert in the field
2. The person has been "toying" with the idea for a reasonable amount of time.

For those of you who are interested there is a new book written by R Gopalakrishnan (Executive Director, TATA SONS). The title is called "The Case of the Bonsai Manager". There are a lot of his personal insights about Intuition Vs Analysis when making a decision.
RG (as he is popularly known as) is a wonderful writer and a great thinker. The book would make a very good reading for all those who posted here.

The discussion of intuition Vs. Analytics is on for quite a long time. We should nt forget that the most wonderful strategies are split second gut decisions made by operational managers who carried the resposibility of directing the firm i.e in charge of strategy. But the realities of business has grown on to accomodate complexities arising from ever improving technology, expanding markets etc and with them the data complexity has grown. So the ability of a manager to substantiate his gut feel has diminished considearbly, while the penalties on wrong decisions has grown exponentially . All our analytics does is to solve the data complexity part to enable a human brain substantiate its analysis of dynamic complexity. So there is no question of which is better coz even analytics may lead to close situation, in such cases only a human brain going by its ability to analyse dynamic complexity of the system in which it operates takes the final call. So it is all about inculcating a systematic understanding of the underlying business premises and structures by constantly enabling the human mind to make sense out of the data rich world through analytics.

Analytics powered intuition.