Evaluating the propensity of repeat entrepreneurs to use intuitive decision making: a pilot study

'Listening to our hearts gives us a sense of direction even when the road is not well marked.' -- Andrea Van Steenhouse PhD. Most of the available literature on intuition takes a cognitive based perspective, arguing that intuition is learned behaviour (intuition as expertise). However, the elements generally agreed to be important to intuition as expertise can also be attributed to intuition as sensing (non-local). Whilst the business literature tends to take a phenomenological approach to intuition, this research uses an empirical approach with a psycho-physiological measure. This work argues that those feelings associated with intuition may be the result of an entrepreneur’s passionate attentional focus (Bradley 2006a). A recent publication concerning the electro-physiological evidence of intuition (McCraty et al 2004) has shed some light on how we interpret meaning in the world around us and its impact on decision making. This research proposes that entrepreneurs have a propensity for intuitive decision making and that the heart’s autonomic nervous system is involved in processing and decoding intuitive information. A qualitative case study methodology was used for this study of thirty English and Australian repeat entrepreneurs. This research presents the results of a multi-methods pilot study testing the efficacy of a new computer-based experimental protocol developed to isolate and measure the non-local intuition in entrepreneurs. The computer-based experimental protocol incorporates a physiological measure of one’s intuitive response to future events. The goal was to evaluate the protocol’s measurement discrimination in predicting future outcomes of investment decisions in entrepreneurs. Therefore, the purpose of the pilot study was methodological – testing the measurement system and the protocol. The aggregate physiological results presented of non-local intuition in entrepreneurs were inconclusive. The individual results, however, were promising and indicated a trend consistent with the work of other researchers in the field. The results of the Cognitive Style Index (CSI) and the content analysis of the interviews strongly support the proposition that repeat entrepreneurs have a greater propensity for intuitive decision making. This research found that ‘seeing the bigger picture’ was found to be the most important factor in entrepreneurial decision making. This is consistent with the view of intuition as a function that apprehends the totality of a given situation. This can best be summed up by one repeat entrepreneur’s comment, ‘I built this business this way so I can spend three days a week working and the rest of my time giving back to my community. Why? Because I really wanted to make a difference, what other reasons are there?’