Cognitive Biases

Cognitive biases affect our decision making ability.

Even celebrated scientists like Sir Isaac Newton weren’t immune to them.

For this reason, the science community has built in

several procedures and safe guards into how

empirical research should be conducted and how evidence is gathered.

During clinical trials for medicinal drug testing for instance,

we go through great lengths to setup double-blind tests

where information about the test is kept from both tester and subject until after the test.

This is to avoid two kinds of biases: the observer effect and the experimenter effect.

While of sound intent, conducting entrepreneurial inquiry using the same level of rigor

can be overkill in many instances.

Qualifying early adopters from mainstream customers is the experimenter effect at work.

Similarly any direct sales model employs observer bias to influence the sale.

From a macro level, if you can home in on a select part of a customer conversation,

even due to a past pre-disposition, and turn it into repeatable results,

is that bad?

Some biases (or hunches) may actually help you find that right signal in the noise faster.

The best antidote isn’t denying or avoiding these biases

but rather internalizing a set of ground rules that counter-act them.