Driving insights through data and neuroscience important for business

The recent years have seen unprecedented local and global changes in the business environments for enterprises. Be it the pandemic or the ever-changing geo-political situations, all round uncertainty is now the norm. Coupled with this, organizations are grappling with changing mindsets about jobs, careers and quality of life. Quiet-quitting and talent shortage on the one hand and increasingly unforgiving customers who are low on patience on the other, are stretching the ability of organizations to deliver consistent business results and shareholder value.

As has been seen in the past, organizations seek insights to better understand and to predict the behavior of its markets, customers and employees further helps them stay ahead of the pressures on the business.

For example, some brands have, in the past, used data driven insights to improve its Supply Chain Management & logistics. They have used insights to develop predictive maintenance solutions for its customers which gave it an edge over competition 

Another brand famously used extensive market research & insight to gain a deep understanding of its customers – kids & their parents – launching new products that helped them return to profitability.

Better – sharper, deeper, more accurate insights essentially help mitigate against the risk of failure. As understanding human behavior and decision-making becomes increasingly critical, organizations are now looking towards multiple sources of such insights in addition to the traditional means of transaction &/or engagement data.  

The role of genetics and biology, the impact of social and cultural influences, the influence of individual experiences and personal history, the goals people are trying to achieve and the ways in which people's perceptions and emotions influence their behavior are key areas of interest in understanding human behavior.  

Purely data driven approaches involve collecting and analyzing large amounts of data using techniques like machine learning and artificial intelligence to identify patterns and trends in the data, extract insights about human behavior and decision-making and develop predictive models.   

While these approaches often give insight into the “what, when & how” of human behavior, when it comes to understanding the “why” the emotional, implicit and attitudinal drivers become essential to understand.

Numerous studies have shown that emotions influence how we perceive and interpret information. We pay more attention to information that is consistent with our emotional state and the goals we are pursuing.

Neuroscience centered research has also shown that emotions greatly impact our decisions. For example, fear and anxiety result in conservative, risk-averse decisions. On the other hand, happiness and excitement can lead to more risk-taking and exploration. Understanding which emotions shape our decisions and how is a key insight that cognitive neuroscience and consumer neuroscience plays a strong role.   

As each discipline of study of humans, be it psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, behavior science or sociology, brings its own unique set of insights into the understanding of human behavior, multidisciplinary approaches are increasingly now sought after. These approaches integrate insights from multiple fields and help to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the complex factors that influence human behavior.

Organizations are becoming increasingly insight hungry as they seek multidisciplinary data points. The business outcomes and scenarios that organizations seek to address will define the approaches and models they use for acquiring insights through data and neuroscience. Organizations will look toward technology to enable them to gather these insights at scale, efficiently, accurately.

In summary, understanding human decision-making and human behavior is becoming increasingly important for businesses. These insights are critical now more than ever for organizations to be able to respond to uncertainties & disruptions that are now the new normal. As organizations are beginning to successfully leverage these insights and see results on the ground, the usage of multiple disciplines in isolation as well in an integrated manner is only slated to gather momentum and scale.

Dipti Sapatnekar

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Dipti Sapatnekar is Director at Terragni Consulting.