Analytics and Intuition: Finding Equilibrium
As the practice of using data analytics to make organizational decisions grows, where is the line between analytics and intuition? Is there a perfect balance between experience versus data, or data versus experience?
With the growing potential of data and analytics, how should managers balance analytics and intuition?
Just before the New Year, New York Times writer Steve Lohr wrote a blog post, Sure, Big Data Is Great. But So Is Intuition, which addresses a question we here at MIT Sloan Management Review have been researching for the past year: With the growing potential of data and analytics, where is the shifting line between analytics and intuition?
In other words, is there a “correct” balance between analytics and intuition in making good business decisions?
Lohr bases his post on comments made by a number of speakers who presented at a recent MIT Center for Digital Business conference, Big Data: The Management Revolution, including Claudia Perlich, chief scientist at Media6Degrees and Rachel Schutt, a senior statistician at Google Research. His central premise:
Personally, my…concern is that the algorithms that are shaping my digital world are too simple-minded, rather than too smart.
It’s encouraging that thoughtful data scientists like Ms. Perlich and Ms. Schutt recognize the limits and shortcomings of the Big Data technology that they are building. Listening to the data is important, they say, but so is experience and intuition.