CASS Business School

Blue Sky Thinking...?

Over the past few weeks I appear to have spent at least two days a week in 'London town' - which for a boy from the backwoods is always a little strange - all of those people and all of that traffic...

Any how last week I spend two days at CASS Business School right in the heart of the city. As you can imagine - a school that is internationally recognised as one of the best in Europe is a pretty exciting and accommodating place to be invited to visit and speak at - and it was. I spent a few hours chatting to the students on the Entrepreneurship Masters programme and we discussed some of the concepts around market development for entrepreneurial firms, effectuation and tribal markets - but it was the questioning that I found the most interesting.

Gut Feel (GF)

The students were and are astute thinkers and one of the questions merits some discussion here. The question revolved around the concept of 'Gut Feel' (GF). This is an area that I have spoken about many times at gatherings of business and marketing people and an issue that causes some disquiet amongst potential investors. In reality I believe that there is no real concept of GF as the 'Business Intuition' that it refers to is in reality the unconscious side of our brains recalling a group of disparate but connected past experiences and behaviours that out conscious brain has long forgotten - in an instant we recall these past experiences and bring them to mind - but forget where they came from so in an attempt to ground them someplace we just say that it's intuition or GF. I was reflecting on this on my way home on the train last Wednesday afternoon and turned my attention to a copy of the Financial Times...low and behold there on page 14 (Luke Johnson FT 03.03.2010) was a very good discussion of the same - if you were in my session on Tuesday then get hold of a copy and take a look - interesting stuff. If you are a follower of my blog and are about to pitch to a potential investor - take a look...very valuable.

So to some extent today's blog is by way of a thank you to the fine students that are studying for their maters in Entrepreneurship at CASS (I'll be back soon - but keep sending the emails) and of course my old friend Professor Julie Logan for the invitation.

It makes a one time entrepreneur and now aging academic happy to know that the future of entrepreneurial business rests in some very capable hands.

Jonathan