Do you trust your intuition? And if so why? Intuition is most practiced and least understood. And why some people are betting at it and some not? Can intuition be rational and strategic? Is there something called ‘strategic intuition?’ What makes your intuition strategic and mine not?
Most see an interesting connection between innovation, imagination and intuition. Often intuition may even exert a paranormal or even magical influence on everything new and unknown. What do we mean by intuition. In Educating Intuition Robin Hogarth describes various ways we can improve our intuition. He points out two notable impediments to the education of intuition. One is the presence of confusing or “wicked” environments where feedback is unreliable. The other is the limited scope or “domain specific” nature of intuition. Intuition can therefore inhibit innovation because such obstacles exist.
- A person who has a giant database of ideas and insights and supported by fast access to those information as the brain processes these knowledge in a non-linear way and as a result the person is more likely to guess correctly in a more educated than others who do not posses the data points and fast access. In another word, a large database, faster access like a SSD drive and better classification of data.
- A person who has a strong theoretical or philosophical understanding of why things happen through life experiences or as a scholar and therefore can quickly draw on those theories and associated metaphor and as a result can look at these very complex problems and not overwhelmed by its complexity. Getting right to the core and a possible decision pops out disguised as intuition. They perceive wholes and compress much into a flash. Philosophers and prophets are often intuitive. It is wisdom secretly disguised as intuition.
- A person who has a strong logical and deductive reasoning capabilities and it to eliminate the impossibilities and therefore left with the more realistic options and by probability the person is in a better position to conclude. This can be dangerous as the person can be very wrong if the answers lie outside conventional logic. But in 90% of the time, the guess is correct due to the narrow nature of the problems. It is fast logic disguised as intuition.
Intuition is a very general word, it is not taught in school (may be art school) and we don’t know what prompt some rely more on it more and some completely ignore it. The value of intuition is not celebrated in the world of scientific management but commonly practice in the world of design thinking. Many CEOs made important decisions based on it but won't admit it. In the world of data-dominance, it is not easy to find a place for intuition, you can still use it discreetly. Or just call it innovation or sense-making.
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