WE OFTEN USE mental shortcuts (heuristics) to make decisions. There is simply too much information coming at us from all directions, and too many decisions that we need to make from moment to moment, to think every single one through a long and detailed analysis. While this can sometimes backfire, in many cases intuition is a perfectly fine shortcut. However, intuition is helpful only under certain conditions.
The most important condition is expertise. If I am a novice mountain climber, then my intuition on whether a given route is safe is not going to be accurate—I have no previous knowledge on which to base that decision. Similarly, if a financial history professor is making an investment decision, her expertise in financial history does not automatically extend to financial investments, thus she…
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Harvard Business Review Special Issues (Digital) - 1 Issue, Fall 2023