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Houston research: Why business leaders should adopt a science-based approach to decision making

When business leaders make assumptions, they may overlook key factors driving desired outcomes. Photo via Getty Images

Life is full of intuitive leaps. Whenever we make a judgment or choice based on past experience, limited examples or case studies, we make assumptions to fill in the gaps in our knowledge.

Consider someone who wants to lose weight. They might assume they only need to exercise for the pounds to disappear. They attribute 100 percent of weight loss to exercise, when in reality physical activity isn’t the only variable to consider. Instead, multiple factors could be at play, including diet, lack of sleep or even an underlying health condition.

When you make intuitive leaps, you may wrongly attribute success to a single factor, when in fact many different factors may be driving an outcome. In this case, making an intuitive leap rather than considering all the factors may not lead to the desired outcome: significant weight loss.

It’s the same in business, where intuitive leaps run rampant. All too often, executives make intuitive leaps that end up derailing their strategy planning and negatively impacting business operations.

Take, for example, executives at the nursing homes we studied while researching “Focus.” The nursing homes were experiencing high employee turnover they needed to correct. After speaking with a few dozen employees, executives thought that higher pay would cut back on turnover. They had made an intuitive leap, assuming that pay was the sole driver of turnover.

When executives stopped relying on intuitive leaps, they discovered many different factors causing turnover. They started to identify, analyze and prioritize these factors, which included promotion opportunities, respect from supervisors, flexible schedules and access to health insurance. Ultimately, they were successful at reducing turnover — and not by increasing pay. Had they relied on their intuitive leap, they would have spent money raising wages with no reduction in employee turnover.

Other businesses struggle with intuitive leaps, too. Often, the problem is that individual departments believe their lever is 100% responsible for solving a certain problem, such as lackluster sales. An HR executive might believe that to increase sales, the right solution is to get frontline employees more engaged. A sales executive, however, is adamant that the company has to hire more salespeople or adjust pricing. Someone in charge of product development might say product quality needs to be improved. The chief marketing officer may believe advertising will lift sales.

Intuitive leaps are unhelpful to strategic planning. In fact, they often lead to increased silos within a company. CEOs exacerbate this siloing tendency when they call for presentations from executives across departments on how they would contribute to strategy.

To stop making intuitive leaps, executives must accept that their department alone can’t fully inform or deliver a company’s strategy. They must realize and embrace the fact that multiple factors are almost always at play. This requires humility and the ability to look beyond their own department.

For executives, the first step is to identify all factors driving a company’s strategic goal — say, increasing sales. Factors impeding sales might include having too lean a sales team, a low-quality product, an inadequate marketing campaign or even lack of distribution.

Next, executives need to determine the relative weight of each factor in impacting sales. That’s where statistics come into play. Relying on statistical analysis rather than intuitive leaps tells executives how much weight each factor has in driving sales. To build a sound strategy, executives can rank the factors and focus their strategy on the top two or three. Almost always, the top two or three factors drive 70-80% of customer value.

Decades of research have shown how these types of statistical models are better than humans at capturing and quantifying how multiple inputs connect to and inform an output. Used correctly, they can also get rid of intuitive leaps.

In one study, doctoral program admissions committee members used inputs like test scores and grade point averages to select students. Years later, when predicting students’ success, researchers compared experts’ assessments to that of a statistical model.

The model better predicted success. It assessed the data in an unbiased way, while committee members selected candidates based on intuitive leaps, bringing their idiosyncrasies and biases to bear. It’s these types of models that make for effective corporate strategy.

Microsoft is a prime example of a company with leaders that consider multiple variables with an eye for prioritizing ones that drive customer value. Prior to 2014, when CEO Satya Nadella took the helm, CEO Steve Ballmer’s acquisition strategy was seen as more reactive than proactive. Nadella’s approach to acquisition was more “forward-thinking,” and he added to the company’s focus on the cloud and subscription services. He focused on providing tangible benefits to Microsoft’s customers.

Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffet does this, too. When Buffet bought California-based candy maker See’s Candies, he rightly understood that the quality of the company’s chocolates mattered. But it’s not the only factor at play.

Unlike some executives who would make an intuitive leap that the chocolate drove 100% success, Buffet has the humility to understand the company’s success depends on much more than how its chocolates taste. Buffet knows a huge driver of customer value is people’s experience inside See’s stores.

“In the weeks before Christmas and on Valentine’s Day, there are long lines. So at 5 o’clock in the afternoon, some woman is selling the last person the last box of candy, and that person’s been waiting in line for 20 or 30 customers. If the salesperson smiles at that last customer, our moat is widened,” he said in remarks to MBA students, referring to the company’s competitive advantage. “And if she snarls at him, our moat is narrowed… That’s the key. The total part of the product delivery is having everything associated with it say See’s Candy and something pleasant happening.”

Buffet prioritized experience along with the quality of the chocolates, and he continues to do so. Since he bought See’s, the company has grown from $30 million in annual revenue to several hundred million. Humility enabled him to get rid of his intuitive leap and that drove success.

In “Focus,” we delve into exactly how executives can shift to a science-based approach to strategy to grow their business.

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This article originally ran on Rice Business Wisdom and is based on research from Vikas Mittal, J. Hugh Liedtke Professor of Marketing at the Jones Graduate School of Business. Other researchers included: Jenny van Doorn and Peter C. Verhoef of the University of Groningen, as well as Katherine N. Lemon of the Carroll School of Management at Boston College, Stephan Nass of the University of Münster, Doreén Pick of Hochschule Merseburg, and Peter Pirner of Petlando, i-CEM and www.CX-Talks.com.

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The Texas Medical Center Innovation Factory has named the 16 companies making up the inaugural cohort in the Innovate UK Global Incubator Programme. Photo via tmc.edu

Sixteen digital health and medical device startups founded in the United Kingdom have been selected for a customized accelerator at the Texas Medical Center's Innovation Factory.

In partnership with Innovate UK, TMCi created the Innovate UK Global Incubator Programme, a new accelerator that supports UK businesses as they build their United States go-to-market plan. The program builds the BioBridge relationship between TMC and the UK that was originally established five years ago.

“The TMC UK BioBridge program was launched with the UK Department for Business and Trade in 2018 to serve as a gateway for advancing life sciences and foster innovation and research between our two countries," says Ashley McPhail, chief external affairs and administration officer for TMC, in a news release. "We saw an opportunity to work with Innovate UK to develop a larger program with the UK after the success of the 11 companies that previously participated in our health tech accelerator."

The 16 companies will participate in the program from June to November. The cohort is expected to arrive in Houston on June 5 and have access to TMCi's facilities, network of mentors and potential clients, funding, potential customers, and curated programing — all while being a unique entry point into the US. The new offering joins three other globally recognized curriculums: Biodesign, Accelerator for Cancer Therapeutics, and Health Tech.

“TMCi nurtures long-term growth, development, and competitiveness to increase startups chances of success and global expansion," says Emily Reiser, associate director of TMC Innovation. "By bringing their novel technologies and exposing them to a curated selection of TMC’s expert network, startups receive support and evaluation to build, scale, and expand in the US market."

Two of the cohort's specialties include cardiovascular and oncology — two of TMC's strongest areas of expertise — with solutions ranging from surgical devices to AI-enabled risk stratification and hospital efficiency.

Innovate UK is the country's national innovation agency dedicated to supporting business-led innovation in all sectors.

“The United Kingdom is fully committed to improving global healthcare through scientific collaboration," says His Majesty’s Consul General in Texas Richard Hyde in the release. "Through the expansion of the TMC UK BioBridge and in partnership with Innovate UK, this programme will help to expose the brightest and best British companies to the world’s largest medical city. Our companies will collaborate and grow as they work to develop cutting edge technology. The partnership between the UK Government and TMC demonstrates that international collaboration can drive both economic growth and improvement to quality of life.”

The 16 companies making up the inaugural cohort are as follows, according to TMC.

  • AINOSTICS aims to revolutionize the treatment and prevention of neurological conditions, such as dementia, by developing innovative AI-enabled solutions that draw novel insights from routinely acquired non-invasive medical scans to deliver accurate diagnosis and outcome prediction, and in turn facilitate personalized care and timely access to disease-modifying treatments for patients.
  • Alvie is a blended human plus AI-enabled digital solution providing personalised pre and rehabilitation coaching and supportive care for cancer and surgery. Alvie's technology combines data profiling, risk-stratification and tailored prescriptions of health and well-being with curated educational content, targeted behaviour change coaching and expert support through chat messaging and virtual consultations.
  • C the Signs™ is a validated AI cancer prediction platform, which can identify patients at risk of cancer at the earliest and most curable stage of the disease. Used by healthcare professionals, C the Signs can identify which tumor type a patient is at risk of and recommend the most appropriate next step in less than 30 seconds. The platform has detected over 10,000 patients with cancer, with over 50 different types of cancer diagnosed, and with a sensitivity of >98% for cancer.
  • At PEP Health, We believe all patients deserve the best care possible. Our cutting-edge machine-learning technology enables healthcare organisations, regulators, and insurers the real-time, actionable insights they need to have a direct and dramatic impact on patient experiences.
  • PreciousMD improves the lives of lung-cancer and other lung-related illnesses patients worldwide by enabling imaging-based diagnostics needed for personalized treatment pathways.
  • Ufonia is an autonomous telemedicine company, we use large language models and voice AI to increase the capacity of clinical professionals.
  • My mhealth offers digital therapeutics for a range of long-term conditions- COPD, Asthma, Diabetes and Heart Disease. Our product has been successfully deployed in the UK and India, with >100,000 users registered to date. Our solutions empower patients to self-manage their conditions, resulting in dramatic improvements in outcomes, as evidenced through multiple clinical trials and real-world evaluations.
  • At Surgery Hero, we offer a clinically backed solution that ensures whole-human support before and after surgery. We help health systems, employers and health plans cut costs without sacrificing quality of care.
  • Panakeia's software platform enables extremely rapid multi-omics profiling in minutes directly from routinely used tissue images without needing wet lab assays.
  • QV Bioelectronics are striving to deliver longer, better quality lives for brain tumour patients. Using their first-of-its-kind implantable electric field therapy device, GRACE, QV will provide effective, focal & continuous treatment without impacting patient quality of life.
  • 52 North is a med-tech company focused on improving health outcomes and health equity by reinventing care pathways. The NeutroCheck® solution is a finger-prick blood test and digital platform built to significantly improve safety and quality of life for cancer patients, by helping to identify at-home those patients who are at risk of the most fatal side-effect of chemotherapy: neutropenic sepsis.
  • Somnus is fulfilling an unmet need in global healthcare by developing real-time, point of care blood propofol monitoring. Its products will improve the care of sedated and anaesthetised patients, save money for hospitals, and facilitate a major reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
  • ScubaTx is a breakthrough organ transplant preservation company established to solve the global unmet need for cost-efficient and longer-duration organ preservation technology. ScubaTx has developed a simple, small and affordable device which uses Persufflation to extend the preservation of organs.
  • IBEX is on a mission to help people live active, healthy and productive lives by increasing their access to early diagnosis of osteoporosis. The IBEX BH software as medical device delvers routine, automated assessment of fracture risk from routine radiology for earlier detection and more equitable treatment of osteoporosis.
  • NuVision produces products derived from donated human amniotic membrane that are used in ophthalmology to help patients with chronic, traumatic and post-surgical wounds of the eye to be treated earlier and recover more fully and more quickly. The company’s products are also used in the management of dry eye disease, a debilitating conditions that affects around 17m people in the USA.
  • Calon Cardio-Technology is on a mission to improve quality of life for patients with Left Ventricular Assist devices (LVAD) and reduce the common post operative complications associated with these implantable heart pumps. We plan to do this by introducing a completely wireless heart pump system and augment patient follow-up with built-in remote monitoring capabilities.

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