That thinking feeling

Far from being emotionally driven, gut feelings can help us to make the best decisions, says a US expert on entrepreneurialism.

- PAUL LITTLE

If you've ever had an inkling that something you can't quite put your finger on is right, then, according to Laura Huang, you are probably correct. The trained engineer, former investment adviser and business consultant should, by all the stereotypes, be a hard-nosed, data-driven, inside-the-square thinker. And indeed, Huang is a data geek, but the conclusion of all her deep-diving research is that intuition and gut feel are largely unrecognised super skills that we can learn to use to our advantage.

Although they sound similar, intuition and gut feel are actually two very different experiences, says the author of You Already Know: The Science of Mastering Your Intuition. Simply put, intuition is a process, gut feeling is the outcome.

Intuition is made up of a variety of not necessarily conscious factors, such as emotional memory, cultural contexts, personal observations and expertise. Gut feeling is the result when these work together to provide a moment of clarity around an issue so we make the right decision for us.

If you have a hunch that this is as counter intuitive as it gets, you could be right. “There was a bunch of surprising findings when I started studying this and trying to understand the science behind it, says Huang. “One of those things was that we misunderstand what intuition and gut feel is.”

When we recognise that there's a process and there's an outcome we can start to identify what the process is like for us and what form gut feel takes when we have it.

THE SUBTLE SIGNALS

Huang has held faculty positions at Harvard Business School and the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Her CV is laden with awards for her research on entrepreneurship and she is currently faculty director of the Women’s Entrepreneurship Initiative at Northeastern University in Boston.